l a Greenlander, who eats ten or fifteen pounds of it a
day."

"Fifteen pounds!" said Bell. "What stomachs!"

"Real polar stomachs," answered the doctor; "prodigious stomachs which
can be dilated at will, and, I ought to add, can be contracted in the
same way, so that they support starving as well as gorging. At the
beginning of his dinner, the Esquimaux is thin; at the end, he is fat,
and not to be recognized! It is true that his dinner often lasts a
whole day."

"Evidently," said Altamont, "this voracity is peculiar to the
inhabitants of cold countries!"

"I think so," answered the doctor; "in the arctic regions one has to
eat a great deal; it is a condition not only of strength, but of
existence. Hence the Hudson's Bay Company gives each man eight pounds
of meat a day, or twelve pounds of fish, or two pounds of pemmican."

"That's a generous supply," said the carpenter.

"But not so much as you imagine, my friend; and an Indian crammed in
that way does no better work than an Englishman with his pound of beef
and his pint of beer a day."

"Then, Doctor, all is for the best."

"True, but still an Esquimaux meal may well astonish us. While
wintering at Boothia Land, Sir John Ross was always surprised at the
voracity of his guides; he says somewhere that two men--two, you
understand--ate in one morning a whole quarter of a musk-ox; they tear
the meat into long shreds, which they place in their mouths; then each
one, cutting off at his lips what his mouth cannot hold, passes it
over to his companion; or else the gluttons, letting the shreds hang
down to the ground, swallow them gradually, as a boa-constrictor
swallows an animal, and like it stretched out at full length on the
ground."

"Ugh!" said Bell, "the disgusting brutes!"

"Every one eats in his own way," answered the American,
philosophically.

"Fortunately!" replied the doctor.

"Well," said Altamont, "since the need of food is so great in these
latitudes, I'm no longer surprised that in accounts of arctic voyages
there is always so much space given to describing the meals."

"You are right," answered the doctor; "and it is a remark which I have
often made myself; it is not only that plenty of food is needed, but
also because it is often hard to get it. So one is always thinking of
it and consequently always talking of it!"

"Still," said Altamont, "if my memory serves me right, in Norway, in
the coldest countries, the peasants need no such enor