Читать книгу New Rivers of the North: The Yarn of Two Amateur Explorers - Footner Hulbert - Страница 14

"Grub" is the great concern of the North. In civilized communities we take our food for granted, there are always the stores; north of fifty-four it is different. Hand to mouth living is not long permitted in that rigorous climate. "Look ahead with your grub," is a favorite saying, and, "As long as we have grub enough for the winter nothing matters," is another. When a man gets his winter's supply of flour stacked behind the stove he sits back with an easy mind, like our friend Chase on Lesser Slave River.

A careful calculation in advance is necessary. To one who has never thought of the subject the bulk of food that one ordinary-sized person can get outside of in, say, a month is surprising. Two pounds of flour per day per man is the Hudson's Bay Company allowance. We did not use quite as much as this, but we eked out our flour with rice. Man to man the Indians are not as big as we are, but they can eat circles around us,—when the food is forthcoming. When it is not, they do without much more gracefully than we do. Their lives are a constant succession of feasts and famines.

About six ounces of bacon each per day was enough for us, and we did with less when we had to. It must be remembered, though, that we often had as much game and fish as we could eat, and we nearly always had another animal food in the shape of butter, that we set great store by. Good preserved butter is to be had at all the trading-posts (when they are not out of it) and fresh butter at the farming settlements at Peace River Crossing, and Fort Vermilion.

We found that we each consumed nearly six ounces of sugar a day. Incessant exertion in the open air creates a natural craving for sugar. Never be tempted by the great saving in weight to take saccharin to sweeten your tea and coffee. The sweetness of sugar is merely incidental; it is the heat and energy it supplies that make it indispensable.

Beans were not a success with us. We could rarely stop long enough to cook them properly. Rice, on the other hand, we learned to prize greatly. Too much cannot be said in praise of rice on such a journey; it is easy to cook in camp; it can be served in any number of ways; and the human stomach never seems to weary of it. Here is the method of cooking that we evolved after long practice:

Wash two scant cupfuls of rice in cold salted water. Wash it as much as you like. Meanwhile have your water boiling furiously over the fire, the larger the pot, and the more water the better; plenty of water is an essential. Drain off the cold water, and empty the rice into the pot rather slowly, so as not to chill the boiling water. Let it boil hard for twenty minutes or less. As the time approaches, taste it occasionally and remove it before it is quite done, that is while the grains still retain a faint suggestion of toughness in the middle. The proper moment to take it off can only be determined by practice. Every drop of the starchy water should now be drained off the rice, and the pot hung back over the fire, high up, for the grains to steam and swell and finish cooking. Meanwhile you are frying the bacon or what not.

This is good to eat with soup, or bacon fat, or stewed tomatoes, or raisins and sugar, or with almost anything you have. Our favorite dish was a stew de luxe of rice, tomatoes, onions, and bacon cut small. The quantity of rice I have mentioned sufficed for our dinner, with enough left over to fry for breakfast.

Another essential was dried fruit. We took both apricots and prunes. The former went farther, bulk for weight, but the latter wore better as a steady article of diet. In spite of the jokes at its expense after all there is nothing like the humble Prune. As to dried apples, like the little girl we all know, when they are good they are very, very good, and when they are bad, they are horrid. Great care should be taken in buying them.

Tea, salt, pepper, and baking-powder completed our list of necessaries. Coffee and cocoa are very good, but they may be done without at a pinch. You do not find them often in the North. Our fondness for cocoa was quite a joke to our hardy friends of the trails, and there is a noted explorer who is known far and wide in the country as "Chocolate Harry." As to coffee it is hard to carry; for it soon loses its savor when ground. There is now, however, an excellent coffee powder on the market.

It is when you come to the luxuries, the little things that make meals worth eating, that the opportunity for discussion really arises. First on our list we put "Erbswurst mit speck." It really belongs in the list of necessities. If there is a camper or tripper who has not yet discovered Erbswurst, he is unworthy of the name. We have found it equally savory and nourishing on Lesser Slave Lake and on Lake Okeechobee. On long, damp trips such as ours it does not keep quite as well as one might wish. The proprietors would do well to put out a damp-proof package.

Another excellent thing is the de-hydrated vegetable, especially man's odorous friend, the onion. Our de-hydrated onions were worth their weight in gold. Potatoes, too, are good in countries where fresh ones are unobtainable. If you are going into a game country take some de-hydrated cranberries along. On the other hand, the soup powders were not satisfactory; in fact, all the patent soups we tried proved to be pretty poor living, except Erbswurst. Bouillon cubes, however, are useful. The milk and egg powders can be recommended too; indeed the camp bill of fare has endless possibilities nowadays.

For a good, quick camp soup take a can of corn, a cup of milk (condensed milk diluted, or milk powder dissolved), two bouillon cubes dissolved in a little warm water, and a tablespoonful of bacon dripping (or butter) rubbed smoothly into two tablespoonfuls of flour. Bring the milk and the corn to a boil together and add the bouillon and the flour paste. Let it boil for a minute or two, stirring well, and season with salt and pepper and a dash of Worcestershire sauce—if you have it. This mixture always made my partner groan with satisfaction. A can of tomatoes may be substituted for the corn, but they should be thoroughly stewed before the milk is put in, and a pinch of soda and a teaspoonful of sugar should be added. The milk must be stirred in slowly.

Canned vegetables and fruits are very bulky and heavy in proportion to their net food value—you cannot afford to pack a load of water on your back, and so we never stocked such things, but bought them occasionally when we could, at the trading-posts. The price is by the can, the contents do not figure, and it ranges from forty to seventy-five cents according to the remoteness of the post. At one post we picked up a large can of apples for a dollar and a half that was one of the finest things we ever tasted.

I wonder how many beside ourselves have discovered the virtues of citric acid on the trail. We took a small package of the crystals for use in case we should need an anti-scorbutic, but a pinch of it in our tea in lieu of milk proved so good that we used it all the time, and the little package of "dope" became one of the most valued things in the grub-box. We put a little in stewed fruit, in apple sauce, or in anything where lemons would have served, and I'm sure it helped keep us fit during the weeks when we had no fresh food whatever. Ten cents worth lasted out the summer, though it was continually getting spilled.

Our kitchen outfit was simplicity itself; knives, forks, spoons, cups, and plates; two skillets and a nest of four tin pails; that was all, and it was ample. The only mistake was in having the pails of tin. Tin serves very well for a week or two, but after that one becomes a little weary of the incessant flavor of tin in the food, and in conjunction with acids the result is positively dangerous. Agate-ware is well worth its extra weight. Still better are the copper pots sold by the Hudson's Bay Company. Aluminum, generally speaking, is too fragile to stand the wear and tear of rough travel.

A sheath-knife with a razor edge is an indispensable adjunct to a camp kitchen. There is something attractive and devilish about it too. It is the first thing a tenderfoot always buys. The axe is really a kitchen utensil, also, and the most important article in the entire outfit. Watch it well therefore! If anybody follows our route they will find ours on the sand-bar at the left-hand side going down, immediately below the junction of the Parsnip and the Finlay. Fortunately we had a hatchet in reserve.

Axes bring us naturally to the subject of fire-building on which an entire chapter might be written. But I shall not write it. What would be the use? You cannot tell anybody anything about building fires. Camp-fire vanity is a form of egoism from which the most modest man in other respects is not exempt. Every man believes that he alone has discovered the true best way of building a fire, and his scorn of all other ways knows no bounds.

The tenderfoot is betrayed by his fire just as surely as the experienced tripper is made known by his. The Indians' fires are the sloppiest and the most successful. They seem to be able to make anything burn in any kind of weather, and they are gifted with a special instinct for finding dry wood. Fire-making is the grand discipline of the woods. During the summer I watched my young partner develop from a novice to an expert of no mean ability.

For cooking, to begin with we piled stones to the leeward when we had stones, or set up several green logs, driving pegs into the ground to keep them from rolling down. Against this we built the fire, and if there was bread to be baked, we dug a shallow hole in front for the pans, so that the heat was partly radiated down from above. The pots were hung in the classic way, from saplings sharpened at one end and thrust into the ground, inclining over the fire. Along the Fraser and the Crooked Rivers we used to come across regular fire-places, with uprights at each side and a stick across, from which hung bail-hooks of various sizes ready to our hands.

Bread-making was the cook's grand trial. Two days out of every three the ordeal had to be gone through with. I grew to hate the sight of flour. Under the best of conditions successful bread-making is the result of nicely-balanced conditions, and with only a frying-pan and an open fire the difficulties are multiplied. It is a mistake, though, to suppose that there is no good bread made under these conditions. On the contrary most of it was delicious.

In the jolly cooky of Summit Lake, and in Mac of the Peace River canyon I had the opportunity to study the technique of two of the cleverest dough-tossers in the North. Unfortunately they differed flatly as to method, and I was forced to the opinion that good bread is not a matter of methods but of men. As I never attained to any degree of proficiency myself, I have nothing of value to offer on the subject. Here is one suggestion, however, for cooks of the second class whose bread like mine sometimes reveals an unsuspected doughiness in the middle. Break it open and toast it thoroughly before the fire. Eaten crisp and hot it is as good in its way as the lightest biscuit.

It will be observed in the course of the narrative that we never hired guides, except on the one occasion where we had to have horses to take us over to the Hay River. It cannot be denied that there was an element of foolhardiness in this, but the temptation of running our own show was too great to be resisted. When the guide knows more of the country than you do, he is the boss, and you have to do what you are told. However, there is much to be said on both sides of the question. A capable guide is a treasure, and he adds a lot to the trip. But they are rare, and the ordinary Indian who offers his services so freely is worse than useless. You soon find yourself guiding him like a child. Their sense of honor is different from ours too, and they have no scruples against quietly decamping in the night, if things are not to their liking.

I would not be understood as recommending inexperienced travelers to venture into the wilderness without a guide. There are so many quicker and more merciful methods of suicide! Traveling entirely by one's self is of course quite out of the question. Even the mounted police do not ride alone. Be very sure of yourself before venturing into new country without an experienced conductor. While it is true that we made our way through a country unknown to us without guides, it will be allowed, I hope, that we exercised due prudence, and it should be borne in mind that we were partly fitted for this journey by years of work on other rivers. As it was, the oldtimers like Max Hamilton berated us roundly for what they considered our foolishness. But that wouldn't keep us from doing it again!