Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

420 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFT;adrift on an ice floe, and essaying to eat his boots,did incontinently sneeze his false teeth into themiddle of Baffin's Bay!IN EXTREMIS.—The Far North isFamineLand, the world over, and to it we must look forexamples of what men can subsist on when drivento the last extremity.In all northern countries, within the tree limit, itis customary, in starving times, to mix with thescanty hoard of flour the ground bark of trees. Itis possible to support life even with bark alone. TheJesuit missionary Nicollet reported, more than twocenturies ago, that an acquaintance of his, a FrenchIndian-agent, lived seven weeks on bark alone, andthe Relations of the order, in Canada, contain manyinstances of a like expedient. Those were hardtimes in New France! Such an experience as thiswas dismissed with a single sentence, quite as amatter of course: ''An eelskin was deemed a sumptuoussupper; I had used one for mending a robe,but hunger obliged me to unstitch and eat it."Another brother says: "The bark of the oak, birch,linden, and that of other trees, when well cookedand pounded, and then put into the water in whichfish had been boiled, or else mixed with fish-oil,made some excellent stews." Again: "they [theIndians] dried by a fire the bark of green oak, thenthey pounded it and made it into a porridge." Itseems that the human stomach can stand a lot oftannin, if it has to do so.The young shoots of spruce and tamarack, theinner bark (in spring) of pine, spruce, and hemlock,young leaf-stems of beech, hickory and other trees,the buds of poplar, maple and wild rose, and theyoung leaves and flowers of basswood are nutritiousbut these can be had only, of course, in spring. Farbetter than oak bark are the inner barks of alder,quaking aspen, basswood, birch, sweet bay, cottonwood,slippery elm (this especiall}'^ is nutritious),