Evening star., 1904-03-16
STARVATION DIETS.
These Make Breakfast Foods Look Like
Luxury.

From London Answers.
The hardest fare that six strong men and
boy of fifteen ever kept alive on was the
daily menu of the Windoyer's survivors,
who were east up on the Irish coast near
Kilsegg. They lived for sixteen days on
stewed ropeyarn, without a crumb of ahy-
thing else to help digest it, except water
and though it made them ill, they kept
alive on it, and did not waste away very
much.
The Windover was a bark carrying salt
between Spain and the states, with an
English crew, and she was dismasted and
abandoned about thousand miles out on
the Atlantic. Three of her crew were killed
by falling maStS, and two others We're
washed overheard; but the seven others
took to the whaleboat and set out for
Britain. Being in too much of hurry, they
took too little food, but three large butts
of water. besides the tank the boat already
held The result was they ate up their pro-
visions in four days. but had water enough
for a month, and, after starving two days
more, they tried boiling lengths of tarred
hemp rope into pulp and swallowing it.
They had a keg of paraffine wax, and
though it made them very i'll at first, they
eventually contrived to live on the boiled
| hemp, the tar. boiled to a jelly, adding to
the nourishment of the rope.
Two men who went to a small island
off the Irish coast little while ago Kept
themselves going for ten days on a diet al
was smashed by wave on their trying to
relaunch her, and they were left on the
bare, rocky island, which has only q slight
scalp of coarse turf without food. Fortu-
nately there was spring on the sland. but
nothing in the way of food but guls which
they could not catch, and nothing to make
fire with as distress signal There are
not even any shellfish, as there is no beach,
and the pair had to subsist for the ten
days on cold. raw seaweed washed up by
the tide. For two days they starved but
after that they tackled the seaweed,- maxi
ing three meals day of it, until rescued
A diet of boots is one of the commonest
of last resource foods; and. though 1t is
hard for a well fed person to imagine that
any one could masticate and digest shoe
leather, pair of long sea boots will keep
a man alive for fortnight, If he has a
little water.
OF course. no teeth can tear cowhide
boots; they have to be cut up and shredded
with a knife. and the shreds chewed and
swallowed. Boiling. even when possible.
does no good at all, but takes from the
boots what nourishment they contain. A
few ounces of leather. being SO hard to
digest, stays the stomach for fifteen or
twenty hours.
The best known and most useful of star
walton diets for wrecked or castaway peo-
pie, however, is that of barnacles and II
anything of the kind happens to you they
will probably be your staple food. Bar
nacles are long, tough, half shellfish. half
der sides of vessels. Three Engl shmen and
crew OF Lascars, who had been forced
to abandon the sailing vessel North Star
q few months ago, kept themselves going
for over week on barnacles. and only
two of the crew died. The worst of the y
is that they give one internal cramps Nps
cause an insuHerabie thirst: but tiers
nourish the frame.