Note 10 — Chapter V · A Hard Struggle

For melting water in the cooker it is better to use ice than snow, particularly if the latter be not old and granular. Newly fallen snow gives little water, and requires considerably more heat to warm it. That part of salt-water ice which is above the surface of the sea, and, in particular, prominent pieces which have been exposed to the rays of the sun during a summer and are thus freed from the greater part of their salt, furnish excellent drinking-water. Some expeditions have harbored the superstition that drinking-water from ice in which there was the least salt was injurious. This is a mistake which cost, for instance, the members of the Jeannette expedition much unnecessary trouble, as they thought it imperative to distil the water before they could drink it without incurring the risk of scurvy.