The two liquid foods, cocoa and pea-soup, though not imbibed so plentifully as tea, were considered no less as the natural and fitting companions of meat on any and every occasion. At Camp III it was not unusual to begin supper with pea-soup and end it with cocoa, but such a custom by no means precluded their use at other times. Cocoa tended to fall in my esteem, though it never lost a certain popularity. Pea-soup, on the other hand, had a growing reputation, and, from being considered an accessory, came to be regarded as a principal. However, before I describe its dominating influence in the whole matter of diet, I must mention the solid foods. The three of “standard pattern” were ration biscuits, ham, and cheese. It was no misfortune to find above the Base Camp that we had left the region of fancy breads; for while the chupatis and scones, baked by our cooks with such surprising skill and energy, were usually palatable, they were probably more difficult of digestion than the biscuits, and our appetite for these hard wholemeal biscuits increased as we went upwards, possibly to the detriment of teeth, which became ever more brittle. Ham, of all foods, was the most generally acceptable. The quality of our “Hunter’s hams” left nothing to be desired, and the supply, apparently, was inexhaustible. A slice of ham, or several slices, either cold or fried, was fit food for any and almost every meal. The cheese supplied for our use at these higher camps, and for expeditions on the mountains besides, were always delicious and freely eaten. We had also a considerable variety of other tinned foods. Harris’s sausages, sardines, herrings, sliced bacon, soups, ox tongues, green vegetables, both peas and beans, all these I remember in general use at Camp III. We were never short of jam and chocolate. As luxuries we had “quails in truffles,” besides various sweet-stuffs, such as mixed biscuits, acid drops, crystallized ginger, figs and prunes (I feel greedy again as I name them), and, reserved more or less for use at the highest camps, Heinz’s spaghetti. More important, perhaps, than any of these was “Army and Navy Rations,” from the special use we made of it. I never quite made out what these tins contained; they were designed to be, when heated up, a rich stew of mutton or beef, or both. They were used by us to enrich a stew which was the peculiar invention of Morshead. He called it “hoosch.” Like a trained chef, he was well aware that “the foundation of good cooking is the stock-pot.” But such a maxim was decidedly depressing under our circumstances. Instead of accepting and regretting our want of a “stock-pot,” Morshead, with the true genius that penetrates to the inward truth, devised a substitute and improved the motto: “The foundation of every dish must be pea-soup.” Or if these were not his very words, it was easy to deduce that they contained the substance of his culinary thoughts. It was a corollary of this axiom