FEASTS THAT LASTED HOURS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7819, 11 June 1909, Page 1

FEASTS THAT LASTED HOURS.

■ Sir Robert Hart, the veteran in-spector-general of the Chinese, Customs, speaking at a dinner m London' the other day, said that he once m Pekin sat out a banquet that lasted 17 consecutive hours. There' were N 125 courses, and he tasted them all.' Mr Ward., the American envoy to China, who' tried to secure an- interview with the Emperor Hieng-Fung m 1859, tells how he was" entertained at a dinner that lasted from noon one day until six o'clock on the evening of the day following. The total number of courses is not given, but Ward mentions that-he had to give m after partaking of 138 different dishes, "whereupon his wondered. greatly"--presumably. at his abstemiousness. .' \ Probably, however, the Eskimo banquets last longer than- any other,'arid the quantity of food swallowed is also proportionately greater. . . ' Sir John Ross records that seven of his party of natives once ate continuously for 33 hours, during which time they consumed 200 pounds of seal meat. . , ■ . Europeans exposed to the same cliimatic conditions act m much the same way. Captain Scott, of the Discovery, on his return from his long sledge journey over the inland ice "of , the Antarctio continent, did nothing. 1 but eat and sleep for the space of three days and nights, and oven then he was still hungry. : .Commander Peary and his party> returning famished from their . futile dash for the Pole m 1906, slaughtered a heard of seven musk oxen on. Hazen Island, off the extreme north of Greenland. For two days and nights thereafter they crouched inside their snow huta eating continuously.