It hadn't occurred to me to validate or invalidate anything Andrew. I
just thought some might find it interesting.

<LOL> What a splendidly weasely man...

It would be a very interesting thing to watch someone try to eat
hardtack or dry biscuit without any liquid. These elegant diners had
to let the pieces sit in their cheeks to rehydrate with saliva or,
more commonly, soak the  biscuit (because cooked twice) in water.

Here's one to try. Eat 5 or 6 saltine crackers in a minute without any
added liquid. See how far you get. Or let them sit in your cheek for
15 minutes while you produce enough saliva to rehydrate them. Or drop
them into a glass of water and see how hard they are to eat that way.
Not appetizing unless you're working hard and have little else to eat
on the job.

Neither pemmican nor dry biscuit requires rehydration in the same
sense as, say, freeze-dried soup. But trying to eat either pemmican or
dry biscuit without water is a difficult and unpleasant task.

It says: "While a man required 8 pounds of fish or fresh meat a day,
pemmican supplied the equivalent nourishment in half a pound."

And eating a piece of dry biscuit while rowing means they weren't too
far from the water that they needed to be able to swallow the foods.

The citation Chung liked so much included this:
"During the night, a kettle filled with 9 quarts of peas and water was
hung over the fire, added to it were strips of pork. This simmered
until daylight, when the cook added four "biscuits" and continued to
let it simmer. At dawn, the call "l?ve l?ve nos gens", [French: "leve,
leve nos gens" - arise, arise our people] resounded through the camp.
Canoes were loaded and launched. The swelling of the peas and biscuit
had now filled the kettle to the brim, so thick that a stick would
stand upright in it."

Oh, gee. They "rehydrated" the biscuits to make them palatable. The
biscuit swelled in water enough to be easily chewed... Go figure.

Also says, "...the men obtained a staple diet of dried peas, beans,
"biscuit" and salt pork. This was considered a standard diet."

The quotation marks around "biscuit" means it wasn't the sort of thing
that southern Americans call biscuits. It was akin to the hardtack
that sailors took on long ocean voyages and soldiers carried to war.

Another site offers this:
"Hardtack remained a staple in the New World. During the early
settlement of North America, the exploration of the continent, the
American Revolution, and on through the American Civil War, armies
were kept alive with hardtack."

And...

"Most common of all was the hard tack. Too hard to be eaten whole, it
was sometimes broken up with a rock or rifle butt, placed in the cheek
and softened with saliva until it was soft enough to be chewed and
swallowed.  It was more often soaked in water and fried in bacon
grease.  Hardtack was also called "sheet iron crackers", "teeth
dullers", or "worm castles", a reference to the weevils and maggots
that were all too often found in the boxes of hardtack."
<http://www.kenanderson.net/hardtack/history.html>

Poor Chung forgot how to research...

Bob

It seems to me I heard somewhere that Dr. Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD wrote
in article <1103003389.7ca3c03e6c0f208e5a720412ce29d65f@teranews>:

Thanks for this, Zee.  Enlightening about the fur traders and mountain
men (heroes indeed), just not for Peary's expedition since we know what
his rations were.

"Porc and flour: supplies of food on the road were a major problem;
also, the men used about 5000 calories a day and had to be fed, without
having time to fish.  The easiest portion of the Montreal route was
starting off at Lachine, where the men obtained a staple diet of dried
peas, beans, "biscuit" and salt pork. This was considered a standard
diet."

" A quart [of Indian corn, in making hominy] would be boiled for 2 hours
in water until the kernels opened. By this time, it was thick white
porridge. Hominy was often given an extra taste by adding bacon fat or
bear grease. The Ojibwa Indians brought in corn from as far as Detroit.
Between Sault Ste. Marie and Lake Winnipeg, wild rice, maple sugar, and
fish were also added to this diet."

"pemmican: to the west of Lake Winnipeg, the NWC depended on Plains
Indians to supply them with pemmican, or strips of dried buffalo. As the
voyageurs traveled to the west, the rice was not sustainable enough to

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
provide working energy. The great food staple here was pemmican, used
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
from Rainy Lake to the Rockies and beyond."

"Pemmican was sometimes given a better taste and a higher quality by
adding a mix of berries and marrow. Sometimes, pemmican was made into
rubbaboo, a favorite dish of the north men who [stet!] simply consisted
of pemmican made into a kind of soup by boiling it in water. Flour was
added when available. Pemmican was made in forts or brought over by
Natives for trade. It was held in reserve for long trips or placed in
caches along the way for a return trip. While a man required 8 pounds of

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
fish or fresh meat a day, pemmican supplied the equivalent nourishment
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
in half a pound. In fact, only 55 pounds of pemmican and 45 pounds of
dried meat came from 400 pounds of fresh meat. As such, it was highly
concentrated as only 4 pieces were eaten by one voyageur in 500 miles of
travel. Further, because it was dried, it could be preserved for almost
12 months. The NWC obtained 30 to 50 tons of pemmican each season for
its fur brigades."

"The only time voyageurs received a generous and extravagant meal was at
the annual meetings in Grand Portage. The north men were given a feast
of bread, butter, pork, liquor and tobacco on their arrival. In
contrast, the clerks, guides, partners and interpreters messed together
at several large tables in one large hall, to the number of hundreds at
times. They were provided with bread, salt pork, beef, hams, fish,
venison, butter, peas, Indian corn, potatoes, tea, spirits and wine."

Me too.  For instance, they weren't rowing every single day at lunch
time, and when they weren't they had their usual lunch.  The pemmican
(sort of like jerky, which people also chew on nowadays when eaten
without preparation) was obviously not their regular lunch diet.

Context and full content are everything in reading documents, whether
the Bible or Web pages or medical books.