Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/74

70 morning all hands would man two or three sledges, taking with them picks and ice-drills, and would bring several loads of beautifully clear blocks of ice back to the Scotia. A pile of this was made in a secure place on deck, and a large copper cauldron in the galley was continuously kept full of beautifully pure fresh water from the melting of this ice.

Be it specially noted that during the whole of this time we used sea ice for drinking, cooking and washing, and that fresh water was obtained from it with not the slightest taste of salt. The water was like "soft water"; when mixed with soap it made a good lather. Though it is interesting to note that when a delicate chemical test was performed with nitrate of silver, a slightly milky appearance showed itself in the water, demonstrating that there was actually an infinitely small amount of salt present, this was quite insufficient to be detected by taste. One very good criterion of the purity of this water was that it made excellent tea, and if anything is absolutely spoilt by the presence of salt, the subtle flavour of good tea suffers first. The absence of salt in ice that is formed from the freezing of salt water has been the subject of long and most important investigations by Mr. J. Y. Buchanan (Ice and its Natural History, Royal Institution, May 8, 1908), who has established that the