e
few pounds we had reserved for our return journey, with sinking hearts.
It was kept solely for tea and coffee. We put no more in the sour dough
for hot cakes; we ceased its use on our rice for breakfast; we gave up
all sweet messes. Tatum attempted a pudding without sugar, putting
vanilla and cinnamon and one knows not what other flavorings in it, in
the hope of disguising the absence of sweetness, but no one could eat it
and there was much jeering at the cook. Still it dwindled and dwindled.
Two spoonfuls to a cup were reduced by common consent to one, and still
it went, until at last the day came when there was no more. Our cocoa
became useless--we could not drink it without sugar; our consumption of
tea and coffee diminished--there was little demand for the second cup.
And we all began to long for sweet things. We tried to make a palatable
potation from some of our milk chocolate, reserved for the higher work
and labelled, "For eating only." The label was accurate; it made a
miserable drink, the milk taste entirely lacking, the sweetness almost
gone. We speculated how our ancestors got on without sugar when it was a
high-priced luxury brought painfully in small quantities from the
Orient, and assured one another that it was not a necessary article of
diet. At last we all agreed to Karstens's laconic advice, "Forget it!"
and we spoke of sugar no more. When we got on the ridge the chocolate
satisfied to some extent the craving for sweetness, but we all missed
the sugar sorely and continued to miss it to the end, Karstens as much
as anybody else.

Our long detention here made us thankful for the large tent and the
plentiful wood supply. That wood had been hauled twenty miles and raised
nearly ten thousand feet, but it was worth while since it enabled us to
"weather out the weather" here in warmth and comparative comfort. The
wood no more than served our need; indeed, we had begun to economize
closely before we left this camp.

We were greatly interested and surprised at the intrusion of animal life
into these regions totally devoid of any vegetation. A rabbit followed
us up the glacier to an elevation of ten thousand feet, gnawing the bark
from the willow shoots with which the trail was staked, creeping round
the crevasses, and, in one place at least, leaping such a gap. At ten
thousand feet he turned back and descended, leaving his tracks plain in
the snow. We speculated as to what possible object he could have had,