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196   Art of Travel.

syrup, kneaded with flour, and made into biscuits : these are pricked with holes, dried and baked. They can be eaten just as they are, or made into a porridge, with from twenty to thirty times their weight of water. They were to be bought at Gamble's, 137, Leadenhall Street.

Dried Meat -When more game is shot than can be eaten before the party travel onwards, it is usual to jerk a part of it. It is cut in long strips, and festooned about the bushes, under the full sun, in order to dry it. After it has been sun-dried it will keep for long, before it becomes wholly putrid. Dried meat is a poor substitute for fresh meat ; it requires long steeping in water, to make it tender, and then it is tasteless, and comparatively innutritious. " Four expert men slice up a full-grown buffalo in four hours and a-half." (Leichhardt.) The American buccaneers acquired their name from boucanwhich means jerked meat, in an Indian dialect; for they provisioned their ships with the dried flesh of the wild cattle that they hunted down and killed.

Dried Fish.-Fish may be pounded entire, just as they come from the river, dried in the sun in large lumps, and kept : the negroes about the Niger do this.

Flour travels conveniently in strong canvas bags, each holding 50 lbs., and long enough to be lashed on to a packsaddle. (See "Pack-bags," p. 71.)

Chollet's preserved Vegetables relieve agreeably the monotony of a bush diet. A single ration weighs less than an ounce, and a cubic yard contains 16,000 of these rations. They are now to be bought at all provision merchants'-as at Fortnum and Mason's, &c.

Salted Meat.-I have already said (see " Portable Food") that salt meat cannot be depended upon to retain its nutritious qualities for a length of time. When freshly made, it is sure to be good. It is well to recollect that, for want of a salting-tub, animals can be salted in their own hide. A hollow is scraped in the ground, the hide is laid over it and pegged down, and the meat, salt, and water put into it. I know of an instance where this was done on a very large scale.

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