We have no forks, but each man has a sheath-knife and a spoon, the latter in many cases having been fashioned from a piece of box lid.

The knife serves many purposes.

With it we kill, skin, and cut up seals and penguins, cut blubber into strips for the fire, very carefully scrape the snow off our hut walls, and then after a perfunctory rub with an oily penguin-skin, use it at meals.

We are as regardless of our grime and dirt as is the Esquimaux.

We have been unable to wash since we left the ship, nearly ten months ago.