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Transcriber's Note: This cover has been created by the transcriber using the original plain cover and the title page. It is placed in the public domain.

CAMP-LORE AND WOODCRAFT

THE BOOK OF CAMP-LORE

AND WOODCRAFT

BY

DAN BEARD

FOUNDER OF THE FIRST BOY SCOUTS SOCIETY





WITH 377 ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR













Garden City Publishing Co., Inc.

Garden City New York



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY BEATRICE ALICE BEARD

THE RIGHTS OF TRANSLATION ARE RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



TO

George Du Pont Pratt

COMMISSIONER OF CONSERVATION, STATE OF NEW YORK

SCOUT, SPORTSMAN AND OUTDOOR MAN



[i]

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND

EDITION

Boys, if this foreword is too "highbrow" for your taste, skip it, but the author don't believe you will, and even if he has used some dictionary words he feels that you will forgive him after he tells you that he did so only because of the lack of time to think up more simple terms. What he wants to say is that. . . .

Boyhood is a wonderful and invaluable asset to the nation, for in the breast of every boy there is a divine spark, materialists call it the "urge of youth," others call it the "Christ in man," the Quakers call it the "inner light," but all view it with interest and anxiety, the ignorant with fear and the wise with understanding sympathy, but also with a feeling akin to awe.

Those of us who think we know boys, feel that this "inner light" illuminating their wonderful powers of imagination, is the compelling force culminating in the vigorous accomplishments of manhood. It is the force which sent Columbus voyaging over the unknown seas, which sent Captain Cook on his voyage around the world, the same force which carried Lindbergh in his frail airship across the Atlantic. Yes, it is the sublime force which has inspired physicians and laymen to cheerfully risk and sacrifice their lives in search of the cause of Yellow Fever, Anthrax, Hydrophobia and other communicable diseases . . . no, not for science but for

HUMANITY!



[ii]

As a boy, the author dreamed of wonderful municipal playgrounds, of organizations giving the boys opportunity to camp in the open, of zoological and botanical gardens planned and adapted to the understanding of youth. His busy life as a civil engineer, surveyor, and work in the open gave him no opportunity to develop his dreams, but at the end of a five year tour of the United States and Canada, made over fifty years ago, he drifted into New York City and was shocked beyond expression by the almost total lack of breathing spaces for our boys, in the greatest of American cities. True, it then had Central Park; but fifty years ago Central Park was out among the goats, only to be reached by a long and tiresome horse car journey.

This lamentable state of affairs caused the writer so much real pain and concern that he then and there inaugurated a personal crusade for the benefit of the boys, a crusade with the avowed object of winning for them the peoples' interest in the big outdoors.

The most difficult part of his task was to convince the men of the swivel chairs that boys' leisure should be spent in the open; that the blue sky is the only proper roof for a normal boy's playground; also that the open spaces are the places where God intended young people to live, work and play.

No great crusade, no great movement of any kind is one man's work, nevertheless, every successful movement must have one enthusiast in the front rank, one who knows the trail and comprehensively envisions the objective—objectum quod complexum. Others may and will join him, and occasionally spurt ahead of the leader, like the hare in the fable, but the enthusiast keeps right on just the same.

Pray do not understand by this that the writer claims[iii] that he alone is responsible for this bloodless revolution. No, no, his propaganda work did however win for him the moral support of the editorial staff of St. Nicholas, Youth's Companion and Harpers. Later he was openly backed and encouraged by such distinguished sportsmen as President Roosevelt, his chief forester Governor Pinchot, and his Chief of Staff Major General Bell. While the stalwart men of the Camp Fire Club of America worked hand and glove with him, all similar organizations failed not in voicing their approval. Furthermore he was always helped by his loyal friends of the daily press. Many famous writers lent their influence, all working consciously or unconsciously to help the great cause of boyhood.

The author only claims that, in all these fifty long years, he has never ceased to work for the boys, never wavered in his purpose, and now?—well, when he marched at the head of fifty thousand Scouts in the great muddy outdoor Scout camp at Birkenhead, England, he realized that his ephemeral air castles had settled down to a firm foundation upon Mother Earth.

Yes, boys we have won a great victory for boyhood! We have won it by iteration and reiteration, in other words, by shouting outdoors, talking outdoors, picturing outdoors, singing outdoors and above all by writing about the outdoors, and constantly hammering on one subject and keeping one purpose always in view. By such means we have at last, not only interested the people of the United States in the open, but stampeded the whole world to the forests and the fields. So let us all join in singing the old Methodist hymn:—

[iv]

"Shout, shout, we are gaining ground,

Glory, Hallelujah!

The Devil's kingdom we'll put down,

Glory, Hallelujah!"



The Devil's kingdom in this case is the ill-ventilated school rooms, offices and courts.

It is well to note that the work in this book was not done in the library, but either in the open itself or from notes and sketches made in the open. When telling how to build a cooking fire, for instance, the author preferred to make his diagrams from the fires built by himself or by his wilderness friends, than to trust to information derived from some other man's books. It is much easier to make pictures of impractical fires than to build them. The paste pot and scissors occupy no place of honor in our woodcraft series.

So, Boys of the Open, throw aside your new rackets, your croquet mallets, and your boiled shirts—pull on your buckskin leggings, give a war whoop and be what God intended you should be; healthy wholesome boys. This great Republic belongs to you and so does this

Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft .



Dan Beard



Suffern, New York,

December first,

1930.



[v]

FOREWORD

Hidden in a drawer in the antique highboy, back of the moose head in my studio, there are specimens of Indian bead work, bits of buckskin, necklaces made of the teeth of animals, a stone calumet, my old hunting knife with its rawhide sheath and—carefully folded in oiled paper—is the jerked tenderloin of a grizzly bear!

But that is not all; for more important still is a mysterious wooden flask containing the castor or the scentgland of a beaver, which is carefully rolled up in a bit of buckskin embroidered with mystic Indian signs.

The flask was given to me as "big medicine" by Bow-arrow, the Chief of the Montinais Indians. Bow-arrow said—and I believe him—that when one inhales the odor of the castor from this medicine flask one's soul and body are then and forever afterwards permeated with a great and abiding love of the big outdoors. Also, when one eats of the mystic grizzly bear's flesh, one's body acquires the strength and courage of this great animal.

During the initiation of the members of a Spartan band of my boys, known as the Buckskin Men, each candidate is given a thin slice of the grizzly bear meat and a whiff of the beaver castor.

Of course, we know that people with unromantic and unimaginative minds will call this sentimentalism. We people of the outdoor tribes plead guilty to being sentimentalists; but we know from experience that old Bow-arrow was right, because we have ourselves eaten of the grizzly bear and smelled the castor of the beaver!

[vi]

While the writer cannot give each of his readers a taste of this coveted bear meat in material form, or a whiff of the beaver medicine, direct from the wooden flask made by the late Bow-arrow's own hands, still the author hopes that the magical qualities of this great medicine will enter into and form a part of the subject matter of this book, and through that medium inoculate the souls and bodies of his readers, purify them and rejuvenate them with a love of the World as God Made It.

DAN BEARD



June, 1920

[vii]

CONTENTS

Chapter Page I. FIRE MAKING BY FRICTION 1 How to Make a Fire-board, Bow, Drill and Thimble. Indian Legend of the Source of Fire. Record Fire-makers. Rubbing-stick Outfit. Eskimo Thimble. Bow, Bow-string, Thimble, Fire-board, Fire-pan. Tinder, Charred Rags, Puff Balls. Fire-makers of the Balkan. Fire Without a Bow, Co-li-li, the Fire Saw. Fire Pumping of the Iroquois. Pyropneumatic Apparatus II. FIRE MAKING BY PERCUSSION 21 The White Man's Method, How to Use Flint and Steel. Where to Obtain the Flint and Steel. Chucknucks, Punk Boxes, Spunks and Matches. Real Lucifer Matches. Slow Match. How to Catch the Spark. Substitutes for Flint and Steel III. HOW TO BUILD A FIRE 33 How to Lay and Light a Fire. An Experience with Tenderfeet. Modern Fear of Doing Manual Labor. Matches. Fire-makers and Babylonians. The Palpitating Heart of the Camp. Gummy Fagots of the Pine. How to Make a Fire in Wet Weather. Backwoodsmen's Fire. The Necessity of Small Kindling Wood. Good Firewood. Advantage of Split Wood. Fire-dogs. How to Open a Knife. How to Whittle, How to Split a Stick with a Knife. Bonfires and Council Fires. Camp Meeting Torch Fires. Exploding Stones. Character in Fire. Slow Fires, Signal Fires and Smudges IV. HOW TO LAY A GOOD COOKING FIRE 53 A Personal Experience on Short Rations. The Most Primitive of Cooking Outfits. Camp Pot-hooks, the Gallow-crook, the Pot-claw, the Hake, the Gib, the Speygelia and the Saster. Telegraph Wire Cooking Implements, Wire Grid-iron, Skeleton Camp Stove. Cooking Fires, Fire-dogs, Roasting Fire-lay. Campfire Lay, Belmore Lay, Frying Fire Lay, Baking Fire Lay. The Aures Crane V. CAMP KITCHENS 79 Camp Pit-fires, Bean Holes. Cowboy Fire-hole. Chinook Cooking Fire-hole. Barbecue-pits. The Gold Digger's Oven. The Ferguson Camp Stove. The Adobe Oven. The Altar Campfire Place. Camp Kitchen for Hikers, Scouts, Explorers, Surveyors and Hunters. How to Cook Meat, Fish and Bread Without Pots, Pans or Stoves. Dressing Small Animals. How to Barbecue Large Animals VI. CAMP FOOD 101 How to Make Ash Cake, Pone, Corn Dodgers, Flapjacks, Johnny-cake, Biscuits and Doughgod. Making Dutch Ovens. Venison. Banquets in the Open. How to Cook Beaver Tail, Porcupines and Muskrats. Camp Stews, Brunswick Stews and Burgoos VII. PACKING HORSES 23 How to Make a Pack Horse of Your Own. How to Make an Aparejo. How to Make a Cincha. How to Make a Latigo. How to Throw a Diamond Hitch. How to Throw a Squaw Hitch. How to Hitch a Horse in Open Land Without Post, Tree or Stick or Stone. Use of Hobbles and How to Make Them. How the Travois is Made and Used. Buffalo Bill and General Miles. How to Throw Down a Saddle. How to Throw a Saddle on a Horse. How to Mount a Horse. How to Know a Western Horse [viii] VIII. THE USE OF DOGS. MAN PACKING 145 Hiking Dogs, Pack Dogs. How to Pack a Dog. How to Throw the Dog Hitch. How to Make Dog Travois. Dog as a Beast of Burden in Europe and Arctic America. Man Packing. Pack Rats. Don't Fight Your Pack. Portage Pack. Great Men Who Have Carried a Pack. Kinds of Packs. Alpine Rucksack. Origin of Broad Breast Straps. Make Your Own Outfits IX. PREPARING FOR CAMPING TRIP 165 Porters of the Portage. Old-time Indian Fighters and Wild Animals. Modern Stampede for the Open. How to Get Ready for Camp. Cut Your Finger Nails. Go to Your Dentist. Get a Hair Cut. A Buckskin Man's Pocket. Fly Dope. Protection Against Black Flies, Mosquitoes, Midgets and No-see-ums. The Call of the Wild X. SADDLES 183 How to Choose a Saddle. Evolution of the Mexican Saddle. Birth of the Bluff Fronted Saddle. The Cowboy Age. Sawbucks or Pack Saddles. Straight Leg and Bent Knee. Names of Parts of Saddle. Center Fire and Double Cinch XI. CHOOSING A CAMP SITE 196 'Ware Single Trees or Small Groups of Trees. Safety in Woods or Forest. Keep Your Eyes Open for Good Camp Sites. Cross Streams While Crossing is Good. Keep to Windward of Mosquito Holes. 'Ware Ants' Nests. How to Tell when Wind Blows. Evolution of the Shack. How to Sweep. How to Make Camp Beds. How to Divide Camp Work. Tent Pegs. How to Pitch a Tent Single-handed. How to Ditch a Tent. Use of Shears, Gins and Tripods XII. AXE AND SAW 217 Our Greatest Axeman. Importance of the Axe. What Kind of Axe to Use. How to Swing an Axe. How to Remove a Broken Axe Handle. How to Tighten the Handle in the Head. Accidents. The Brains of an Axe. Etiquette of the Axe. How to Sharpen an Axe. How to "Fall" a Tree. How to Swamp. How to Make a Beetle or Mall. How to Harden Green Wood. How to Make a Firewood Hod. How to Make a Chopping Block. The Proper Way to Chop. How to Make Sawbucks for Logs. How to Use a Parbuckle. How to Split a Log. How to Use a Sawpit XIII. COUNCIL GROUNDS AND FIRES 245 Cherokee Indian Council Barbecue. Camp Meeting Council Ground. The Indian Palisaded Council Fire. Indian Legends of the Fire. Stealing the Fire from the Sun-Maidens of the East. Myths of the Mewan Indians. Totems of the Four Winds, Four Mountains and Four Points of the Compass. Impractical Council Fires. Advantages of the Oval Council Ground. How to Make an Ellipse. How to Divide the Council Ground in Four Courts. Council Ceremonies. Ghost Walk and Path of Knowledge. What the Different Colors Stand for. Patriotism, Poetry and Americanism. Camp Meeting Torch Fires XIV. RITUAL OF THE COUNCIL FIRE 265 Program of a Council Fire. Invocation. The Pledge and Creed of All Americans. Appeal

[1]

CHAPTER I

FIRE MAKING BY FRICTION

HOW TO MAKE A FIRE-BOARD, BOW, DRILL AND THIMBLE

INDIAN LEGEND OF THE SOURCE OF FIRE

RECORD FIRE-MAKERS

RUBBING-STICK OUTFIT

ESKIMO THIMBLE

BOW, BOW-STRING, THIMBLE, FIRE-BOARD, FIRE-PAN

TINDER, CHARRED RAGS, PUFF BALLS

FIRE-MAKERS OF THE BALKAN

FIRE WITHOUT A BOW, CO-LI-LI, THE FIRE SAW

FIRE PUMPING OF THE IROQUOIS

PYROPNEUMATIC APPARATUS

[2]

[3]

CAMP-LORE AND WOODCRAFT

CHAPTER I

FIRE MAKING BY FRICTION

When the "what-is-its" of Pithecantropus erectus age and other like hob-goblin men were moping around the rough sketch of an earth, there were no camp-fires; the only fire that these creatures knew was that which struck terror to their hearts when it was vomited forth from volcanic craters, or came crashing among them in the form of lightning. No wonder that the primitive men looked upon fire as a deity, no doubt an evil deity at first but one who later became good.

When the vast fields of ice covered Europe during the glacier period and forced men to think or die, necessity developed a prehistoric Edison among the Neanderthal men, who discovered how to build and control a fire, thus saving his race from being frozen in the ice and kept on cold storage, like the hairy rhinoceros and elephant of Siberia.

The fire of this forgotten and unknown glacier savage was the forerunner of our steam-heaters and kitchen ranges; in fact, without it we could have made no progress whatever, for not only the humble kitchen range, but the great factories and power-plants are all depending upon the discovery made by the shivering, teeth-chattering savage who was hopping around and trying to keep himself warm among the European glaciers.

But we people of the camp-fires are more interested in primitive fires just as the Neanderthal men built them, than[4] we are in the roaring furnaces of the steel works, the volcano blast furnaces, or any of the scientific, commercialized fires of factory and commerce.

What we love is the genial, old-fashioned camp-fire in the open, on the broad prairie, on the mountainside, or in the dark and mysterious forests, where, as our good friend Dr. Hornaday says,

We will pile on pine and spruce,

Mesquite roots and sagebrush loose,

Dead bamboo and smelly teak,

And with fagots blazing bright

Burn a hole into the night—



Not long ago the author was up North in the unmapped lake country of Canada, and while camping on the portage between two wild and lonely lakes, Scout Joe Van Vleck made himself a fire outfit consisting of Fig. 1, a thimble made of a burl, with which to hold Fig. 2, the spindle made of balsam. Fig. 3 is a bow cut from a standing bush; not an elastic bow,[5] such as one uses with which to shoot arrows, but a bow with a permanent bend to it. Fig. 4 is the fire-pan which is placed under the fire-board to catch the charcoal dust as it falls through the slot when the spindle is twirled.

Fig. 5 is the fire-board, made of a dead balsam tree which was standing within three yards of the camp-fire.

In order to make his fire it was necessary for our Scout to have some tinder, and this he secured from the bark of cedar trees, also within a few yards of our camp. This indeed was a novel experience, for seldom is material so convenient. The fire was built in a few seconds, much to the wonderment of our Indian guide, and the delight of some moose hunters who chanced to be crossing the portage on which our camp was located.

It was an American, Dr. Walter Hough of the U. S. National Museum of Washington, who first proved that a modern up-to-date civilized white man can make a fire with rubbing-sticks, as well as the primitive man. But it was an Englishman who popularized this method of making fire, introduced it among the Boy Scouts of England and America, and the sister organizations among the girls.

According to the American Indian legend the animal people who inhabited the earth before the Redmen lived in darkness in California. There was the coyote man, the vulture man, the white-footed mouse man, and a lot of other fabled creatures. Away over East somewhere there was light because the sun was over there, and the humming-bird man among the animal people of our Indians is the one, according to Dr. Merriman, who stole the fire from the East and carried it under his chin. The mark of it is still there. The next time you see a humming-bird note the brilliant spot of red fire under his chin.

[6]

Now you understand why the king-pin in fire making at your camp deserves the title of Le-ché-ché (the humming-bird).

If one gets the fire from a fire-board, spindle and bow in record time, then the title of Le-ché-ché is all the more appropriate because it was the humming-bird man who hid the fire in the oo-noo tree, and to this day, when the Indian wants fire, he goes to the oo-noo (buckeye) tree to get it; that is, provided he has no matches in the pockets of his store clothes and that some white boy, like the Scout previously mentioned, has taught him how to make fire as did the Indian's own ancestors. But even then the oo-noo[A] wood must be dead and dry.

Austin Norton of Ypsilanti, Michigan, April, 1912, made fire in thirty-nine and one-fifth seconds; Frederick C. Reed of Washington, in December, 1912, made fire in thirty-one seconds; Mr. Ernest Miller of St. Paul made fire in thirty seconds, but it was Mr. Arthur Forbush, one of the author's Scouts of the Sons of Daniel Boone (the scout organization which preceded both the English Boy Scouts and the Boy Scouts of America) who broke the record time in making fire with "rubbing-sticks" by doing it in twenty-nine seconds at the Sportsman's Show at Madison Square Garden, New York. Mr. Forbush made this record in the presence of the author and many witnesses. Since then the same gentleman reduced his own world-record to twenty-six and one-fifth seconds; by this time even that record[B] may have been broken.

The "rubbing-stick" is a picturesque, sensational and[7] interesting method of building a fire, but to-day it is of little practical use outside of the fact that it teaches one to overcome obstacles, to do things with the tools at hand, to think and act with the vigor, precision and self-confidence of a primitive man.

Ever since the writer was a small boy he has read about making fire by rubbing "two chips" or "two sticks" together, and he was under the impression then, and is under the impression now, that no one can build a fire in that manner. When we find reference to rubbing-sticks it is probably a slovenly manner of describing the bow and drill and the other similar friction fire implements. For the bow and drill one requires first a

[8]

Thimble

(Figs. 1, 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D). This is a half round stone or pebble, a half round burl or knot of wood, or it may be made of soft wood with an inlay of a piece of stone. In the bottom of the thimble there is always a shallow hole or socket; see S on Figs. 1, 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D. The thimble is an invention of the Eskimos (Fig. 1C); they keep the spindle upright by holding the pointed upper end of it in a hole (S) drilled into a piece of serpentine, or soapstone.

The author has a thimble personally made for him by Major David Abercrombie. This beautiful implement is made of hard fine-grained wood carved into the form of a beetle (Fig. 1B). It is inlaid with copper and semi-precious stones. The socket hole was drilled into a piece of jade (B), using for the purpose some sand and the drill shown in Fig. 23. There was a piece of steel pipe set into the end of the wooden drill with which to bore a hole into the hard jade. The jade was then inlaid or set into the middle of the bottom of the thimble, and cemented there, Fig. 1B. The author also has a thimble made for him by Edmund Seymour of the Camp-fire Club of America. This thimble is a stone fossil with a hole drilled in it, Fig. 1A.

It is not necessary to tell the reader that when using the bow for power, the twirling spindle cannot be held down with the bare hand, consequently the use of the thimble for that purpose is necessary. Fig. 1C shows an Eskimo thimble so fashioned that it may be held in the fire-maker's mouth.

The Bow

Is a stick or branch of wood (Figs. 3, 3E, 3F and 3G) about a foot and a half long and almost an inch in diameter, which[9] has a permanent bend in it—the bend may be natural or may have been made artificially. To the bow is attached a slack thong, or durable string of some kind. The Eskimos, more inventive than the Indians, made themselves beautiful bows of ivory, carving them from walrus tusks, which they shaved down and strung with a loose strip of walrus hide.

The Bow String

The objection to whang string or belt lacing is that it is apt to be too greasy, so if one can secure a strip of buckskin, a buckskin thong about two inches wide, and twist it into a string, it will probably best serve the purpose (Fig. 6).

The Spindle

The spindle is the twirling stick (Figs. 2, 2A, 2B and 2C) which is usually about a foot long and was used by our American Indians without the bow (Fig. 7). The twirling stick or spindle may be three-quarters of an inch in diameter at the middle; constant use and sharpening will gradually shorten the spindle. When it becomes too short a new one must be made. The end of the spindle should not be made sharp like a lead pencil, but should have a dull or rounded end, with which to bore into the fire-board, thus producing fine, hot charcoal, which in time becomes a spark: that is, a growing ember.

The Fire-board

The fire-board (Figs. 5 and 5A) should be made of spruce, cedar, balsam, tamarack, cottonwood root, basswood, and even dry white pine, maple and, probably, buckeye wood. It should not be made of black walnut, oak or chestnut, or any[10] wood which has a gummy or resinous quality. The fire-board should be of dry material which will powder easily. Dr. Hough recommends maple for the fire-board, or "hearth," as it is called in the Boy Scout Handbook. Make the fire-board about eleven inches long, two inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick.

Near the edge of the board, and two inches from the end, begin a row of notches each three-quarter inch long and cut down through the fire-board so as to be wider at the bottom. At the inside end of each notch make an indenture only sufficiently deep to barely hold the end of your spindle while you make the preliminary twirls which gradually enlarge the socket to fit the end of your spindle.

The Fire-pan

The fire-pan is a chip, shingle or wooden dust-pan used to catch the charred dust as it is pushed out by the twirling spindle (Fig. 4). The use of the fire-pan is also an Eskimos idea, but they cut a step in their driftwood fire-board itself (Fig. 8) to serve as a fire-pan.

Tinder

When you can procure them, charred rags of cotton or linen make excellent tinder, but the best fabric for that purpose is an old Turkish towel.

How to Char a Rag

Find a flat stone (Fig. 10), a broad piece of board, a smooth, hard, bare piece of earth; set your cloth afire and after it begins to blaze briskly, smother it out quickly by using a[11] folded piece of paper (Fig. 9), a square section of birch bark or another piece of board. This flapped down quickly upon the flames will extinguish them without disturbing the charred portion (Fig. 10). Or with your feet quickly trample out the flames. Keep your punk or tinder in a water-tight box; a tin tobacco box is good for that purpose, or do like our ancestors did—keep it in a punk horn (Fig. 30).

Very fine dry grass is good tinder, also the mushroom, known as the puff-ball or Devil's snuff-box. The puff-balls, big ones, may be found growing about the edges of the woods and they make very good punk or tinder. They are prepared by hanging them on a string and drying them out, after which they are cut into thin slices, laid on the board and beaten until all the black dust ("snuff") is hammered out of them, when they are in condition to use as punk or tinder (Fig. 11). In olden times there was a mushroom, toadstool or fungus imported from Germany, and used as punk, but woodcraft consists in supplying oneself with the material at hand; therefore do not forget that flying squirrels (Figs. 12 and 13), white-footed mice (Fig. 14) and voles, or short-tailed meadow mice, are all addicted to collecting good

Tinder

[12] with which to make their warm nests: So also do some of the birds—the summer yellow bird, humming-bird and vireos. While abandoned humming-birds' nests are too difficultto find, last year's vireos' nests are more easily discovered suspended like cups between two branches, usually within reach of the hand, and quite conspicuous in the fall when the leaves are off the trees.

Cedar bark, both red (Fig. 15) and white, the dry inner bark of other trees, dry birch bark, when shredded up very fine, make good tinder. Whether you use the various forms of rubbing-sticks or the flint and steel, it is necessary to catch the spark in punk or tinder in order to develop the flame.

[13]

How to Make a Fire with a Drill and Bow

First find a level solid foundation on which to place your fire-board, then make a half turn with the string of the bow around the spindle, as in the diagram (Fig. 16); now grasp the thimble with the left hand, put one end of the drill in the socket hole of the thimble, the other end in the socket hole on the fire-board, with your left foot holding the fire-board down. Press your left wrist firmly against your left shin. Begin work by drawing the bow slowly and horizontally back and forth until it works easily, work the bow as one does a fiddle bow when playing on a bass viol, but draw the bow its whole length each time. When it is running smoothly, speed it up.

Or when you feel that the drill is biting the wood, press harder on the thimble, not too hard, but hard enough to hold the drill firmly, so that it will not slip out of the socket but will continue to bite the wood until the "sawdust" begins to appear. At first it will show a brown color, later it will become black and begin to smoke until the thickening smoke[14] announces that you have developed the spark. At this stage you gently fan the smoking embers with one hand. If you fan it too briskly, as often happens, the powder will be blown away.

As soon as you are satisfied that you have secured a spark, lift the powdered embers on the fire-pan and place carefully on top of it a bunch of tinder, then blow till it bursts into flame (Fig. 8A). Or fold the tinder over the spark gently, take it up in your hand and swing it with a circular motion until the flame flares out.

Even to this day peasantry throughout the Carpathian and Balkan peninsulas build their fires with a "rubbing-stick." But these people not being campers have a permanent fire machine made by erecting two posts, one to represent the fire-stick and the other the socket thimble. The spindle runs horizontally between these two posts and the pressure is secured by a thong or cord tied around the two posts, which tends to pull them toward each other. The spindle is worked by a bow the same as the one already described and the fire is produced in the same manner.

[15]

Fire Without a Bow

My pupils in the Woodcraft Camp built fires successfully by using the rung of a chair for the spindle, a piece of packing case for a fire-board, and another piece for the socket wood and the string from their moccasins for a bow string. They used no bow, however, and two or three boys were necessary to make a fire, one to hold the spindle and two others to saw on the moccasin string (Fig. 17).

Co-li-li—the Fire Saw

is made of two pieces of bamboo, or fish pole. This is the oldest instrument for fire making used by the Bontoc Igorot and is now seldom found among the men of the Philippines. Practically all Philippine boys, however, know how to make and use it and so should our boys here, and men, too. It is called "co-li-li" and is made of two pieces of dry bamboo. A two-foot section of dead and dry bamboo is first split lengthwise and in one piece, a small area of the stringy tissue lining of the tube is splintered and picked until quite loose (Fig. 18). Just over the picked fibres, but on the outside of the bamboo, a narrow groove is cut across it (Fig. 18G). This[16] piece of bamboo is now the stationary lower part or "fire-board" of the machine. One edge of the other half of the original tube is sharpened like a chisel blade's edge (Fig. 19); it is then grasped with one hand at each end and is slowly and heavily sawed backward and forward through the groove in the board, and afterwards worked more rapidly, thus producing a conical pile of dry dust on the wad of tinder picked from the inside of the bamboo or previously placed there. (Figs. 20 and 21). Fig. 22 is the fire-pan.

"After a dozen strokes," says our authority, Mr. Albert Ernest Jenks, "the sides of the groove and the edge of the piece are burned down; presently a smell of smoke is plain and before three dozen strokes have been made, smoke may be seen. Usually before a hundred strokes a larger volume of smoke tells us that the dry dust constantly falling on the pile has grown more and more charred until finally a tiny spark falls, carrying combustion to the already heated dust cone."

The fire-board is then carefully lifted and if the pinch of dust is smouldering it may now be gently fanned with the hand until the tinder catches; then it may be blown into a flame.

Fire Pumping of the Iroquois

Fig. 23 shows another form of drill. For this one it is necessary to have a weight wheel attached to the lower part of the spindle. A hole is made through its center and the drill fitted to this. The one in Fig. 23 is fitted out with a rusty iron wheel which I found under the barn. Fig. 23C shows a pottery weight wheel which I found many years ago in a gravel-pit in Mills Creek bottoms at Cincinnati, Ohio. It was brick-red in color and decorated[17] with strange characters. For many, many years I did not know for what use this unique instrument was intended. I presented it to the Flushing High School (Long Island), where I trust it still remains. The fire-drill is twirled by moving the bow up and down instead of backward and forward.

The Twirling Stick (American Indian)

Fig. 7 is practically the same as Figs. 16 and 17, with this difference: the bow and thong are dispensed with and the spindle twirled between the palm of the hands, as formerly practised by the California Indians, the natives of Australia, Caroline Islands, China, Africa and India.

Many of the American Indians made friction fire in this manner. They spun the thin spindle by rolling it between the palms of their hands and as pressure was exerted the hands gradually slid down to the thick lower end of the spindle. To again get the hands to the top of the drill requires practice and skill. Personally the writer cannot claim any success with this method.

The Plow Stick (American Indian)

The simplest method of friction is that of the plow, which requires only a fire-board with a gutter in it and a rubbing-stick to push up and down the gutter (Fig. 24). Captain Belmore Browne of Mt. McKinley fame made a fire by this last method when his matches were soaked with water. It is, however, more difficult to produce the fire this way than with the thong and[18] bow. It is still used in the Malay Islands; the natives place the fire-board on a stump or stone, straddle it and with a pointed drill plow the board back and forth until they produce fire. Time: Forty seconds.

Of course it is unnecessary to tell anyone that he can start a fire with a sunglass (Fig. 25) or with the lens of a camera, or with the lens made from two old-fashioned watch crystals held together. But as the sun is not always visible, as lenses are not supposed to grow in the wild woods and were not to be found in the camps and log cabins of the pioneers, and as watch crystals have short lives in the woods, we will pass this method of fire making without matches as one which properly belongs in the classroom.

The Pyropneumatic Apparatus

Before or about the time of the American Revolution some gentleman invented a fire piston (Fig. 26) with which he ignited punk made of fungus by the heat engendered by the sudden compression of the air.

The ancient gentleman describes his invention as follows: "The cylinder is about nine inches long, and half an inch in diameter; it terminates in a screw on which screws the magazine intended to hold a bougie, and some fungus. A steel rod is attached to a solid piston, or plunger, not shown in the figure, it being within the tube. This rod has a milled head and there is a small hole in the tube to admit the air, when the piston is drawn up to the top, where a piece unscrews, for the purpose of applying oil or grease to the piston. I have found lard to answer the end best."

[19]

Method of Using It

"Take from the magazine a small piece of fungus, place it in the chamber, screw the piece tight on and draw the piston up by the end, till it stops. Hold the instrument with both hands in the manner represented in Fig. 26, place the end on a table or against any firm body, either in a perpendicular, horizontal or vertical direction, and force the piston down with as much rapidity as possible. This rapid compression of the air will cause the fungus to take fire. Instantly after the stroke of the piston, unscrew the magazine, when the air will rush in, and keep up the combustion till the fungus is consumed. Observe, in lighting the tinder, the fungus must be lifted up a little from the chamber, so as to allow the tinder to be introduced beneath it, otherwise it will not kindle.

"Here it may be remarked that the instrument thus constructed has a decided advantage over the fire-cane, where the fungus is inserted at such a depth as not easily to be reached."

But in Burmah they had the same idea. There the coolies still light their cigarettes with a fire-piston. The Philippinos also use the same machine and ignite a wad of cotton stuck on the end of the piston by suddenly forcing the piston into air-tight cylinders, and when the piston is quickly withdrawn the cotton is found to be aflame, so it may be that the Colonial gentleman had traveled to the Indies and borrowed his idea from the Burmahs, or the Philippinos. At any rate we do not use it to-day in the woods, but it finds place here because it belongs to the friction fires and may be good as a suggestion for those among my readers of experimental and inventive minds.

[20]

[21]

CHAPTER II

FIRE MAKING BY PERCUSSION

THE WHITE MAN'S METHOD; HOW TO USE FLINT AND STEEL

WHERE TO OBTAIN THE FLINT AND STEEL

CHUCKNUNCKS, PUNK BOXES, SPUNKS AND MATCHES

REAL LUCIFER MATCHES

SLOW MATCH

HOW TO CATCH THE SPARK

SUBSTITUTES FOR FLINT AND STEEL

[22]

[23]

CHAPTER II

FIRE MAKING BY PERCUSSION

The preceding methods of producing fire by friction are not the white man's methods, and are not the methods used by our pioneer ancestors. The only case the writer can remember in which the pioneer white people used rubbing-sticks to produce fire, is one where the refugees from an Indian uprising and massacre in Oregon made fire from rubbing-sticks made of the bits of the splintered wood of a lightning stricken tree. On that occasion they evidently left home in a great hurry, without their flints and steels.

But this one instance in itself is sufficient to show to all outdoor people the great importance of the knowledge and ability to make friction fires. Like our good friend, the artist, explorer and author, Captain Belmore Browne, one may at any time get in a fix where one's matches are soaked, destroyed or lost and be compelled either to eat one's food raw or resort to rubbing-sticks to start a fire.

It is well, however, to remember that the flint and steel is

The White Man's Method

And notwithstanding the fire canes of our Colonial dudes, or the Pyropneumatic apparatus of the forgotten Mr. Bank, fire by percussion, that is, fire by friction of flint and steel, was universal here in America up to a quite recent date, and it is still in common use among many of my Camp-fire Club friends, and among many smokers.

[24]

How to Use Flint and Steel

In the age of flint and steel, the guns were all fired by this method. Fig. 33 shows the gun-lock of an old musket; the hammer holds a piece of flint, a small piece of buckskin is folded around the inside edge of the flint and serves to give a grip to the top part of the hammer which is screwed down. To fire the gun the hammer is pulled back at full cock, the steel sets opposite the hammer and is joined to the top of the powder-pan by a hinge. When the trigger is pulled the hammer comes down, striking the flint against the steel, throwing it back and exposing the powder at the same time to the sparks which ignite the powder in the gun by means of the touch hole in the side of the barrel of same. This is the sort of a hammer and lock used by all of our ancestors up to the time of the Civil War, and it is the sort of a hammer used by the Confederates as late as the battle of Fort Donaldson. In the olden times some people had flint lock pistols without barrels, which were used only to ignite punk for the purpose of fire-building. But when one starts a fire by means of flint and steel one's hands must act the part of the hammer, the back of one's knife may be the steel, then a piece of flint or a gritty rock and a piece of punk will produce the spark necessary to generate the flames.

In the good old pioneer days, when we all wore buckskin clothes and did not bother about the price of wool, when we wore coonskin caps and cared little for the price of felt hats, everybody, from Miles Standish and George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, used flint and steel. Fig. 27 shows ten different forms of steel used by our grandsires and granddames.

[To see a larger version of this image, click on the image]

Flint in its natural condition may be found in many states, but, as a rule, any stone which was used by the Indians for[25]

[26]

[27] arrowheads will answer as a substitute for flint,[C] that is, any gritty or glassy stone, like quartz, agate, jasper or iron pyrites. Soft stones, limestones, slate or soapstones are not good for this purpose.

The Steel

Most of the old steels were so made that one might grasp them while thrusting one's fingers through the inside of the oval steel, Fig. 28 (left handed). Some of the Scoutmasters of the Boy Scouts of America make their own steels of broken pieces of flat ten-cent files, but this is unnecessary because every outdoor man, and woman, too, is supposed to carry a good sized jack-knife and the back of the blade of the jack-knife, or the back of the blade of one's hunting knife is good enough steel for anyone who has acquired the art of using it as a steel.

But if you must have steels manufactured at the machine shop or make them yourself, let them be an inch wide, a quarter of an inch thick, and long enough to form an ellipse like one of those shown in Fig. 27. Have the sharp edges rounded off. If you desire you may have your steel twisted in any of the shapes shown in Fig. 27 to imitate the ones used by your great granddaddies.

The Chucknuck

But the neatest thing in the way of flint and steel which has come to the writer's attention is shown by Fig. 31. This[28] is a small German silver box which still contains some of the original fungus used for punk and an ancient, well-battered piece of flint. Around the box is fitted the steel in the form of a band, and the whole thing is so small that it may be carried in one's vest pocket. This was once the property of Phillip Hagner, Lieutenant, of the City of Philadelphia at the time of the Revolution, that is, custodian of city property. He took the Christ Church bells from Philadelphia to Bethlehem by ox-cart before the city was occupied by the British. Phillip Hagner came from Saxony about 1700 and settled in Germantown, Philadelphia. This silver box was presented to the National Scout Commissioner by Mr. Isaac Sutton, Scout Commissioner for Delaware and Montgomery Counties, Boy Scouts of America.

Punk Boxes

The cowhorn punk box is made by sawing off the small end and then the point of a cow's horn (Fig. 30). A small hole is next bored through the solid small end of the horn to connect with the natural open space further down, a strip of rawhide or whang string larger than the hole is forced through the small end and secured by a knot on the inside, which prevents it from being pulled out. The large end of the horn is closed by a piece of thick sole leather attached to the thong, by tying a hard knot in the end and pulling the thong through a hole in the center of the stopper until the knot is snug against the leather disk; this should be done before the wet leather is allowed to dry. If the thong and leather stopper are made to fit the horn tightly, the dry baked rags, the charred cotton, or whatever substance you use for punk, when placed in the horn will be perfectly protected from moisture or dampness.

[29]

Sulphur Headed Spunks and Matches

These old sulphur "spunks" were nothing more than kindling wood or tinder, because they would not ignite by rubbing but were lighted by putting the sulphur end in the flame. According to our modern ideas of convenience they appear very primitive. They were called "spunks" in England and "matches" in America, and varied in length from three to seven inches, were generally packed in bundles from a dozen to two dozen and tied together with bits of straw. Some spunks made as late as 1830 are considered rare enough to be carefully preserved in the York Museum in England (Fig. 32½). The ones illustrated in Fig. 32 are a Long Island product, and were given to the author by the late John Halleran, the most noted antique collector on Long Island. These are carefully preserved among the antiquities in the writer's studio. But they are less than half the length of the ones formerly used on the Western Reserve. With the ancient matches in the studio are also two old pioneer tinder boxes with flints and steels. The tinder boxes are made of tin and contain a lot of baked rags. The inside lid acts as an extinguisher with which to cover up the punk or tinder in the box after you have lighted the candle in the tin lid of the box (Fig. 32).

The matches we use today are evolved from these old sulphur spunks. When the writer was a little fellow up in the Western Reserve on the shores of Lake Erie, he was intensely interested in an old lady making sulphur matches. Over the open fire she melted the sulphur in an iron kettle in which she dipped the ends of some pine slivers. The sulphur on the end of the sticks was then allowed to cool and harden. These matches were about the length of a lead pencil and could only be lighted by thrusting the sulphur[30] into the flame. So, although having been born in the age of Lucifer matches, the writer was yet fortunate enough to see manufactured and to remember the contemporary ancestors of our present-day "safety" match.

The Real Lucifer Match

That is, the match which lights from friction, is the invention of Isaac Holden, M. P. According to the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Holden said, "In the morning I used to get up at 4 o'clock in order to pursue my studies, and I used at that time the flint and steel, in the use of which I found very great inconvenience. Of course, I knew, as other chemists did, the explosive material that was necessary in order to produce instantaneous light, but it was very difficult to obtain a light on wood by that explosive material, and the idea occurred to me to put sulphur under the explosive mixture. I did that and showed it in my next lecture on chemistry, a course of which I was delivering at a large academy."

Because every real woodsman is a student, as well as a sentimentalist, a brief history is given of these fire implements to entertain him as we jog along the "trace." All these things are blazes which mark the trail to the button in our wall which now produces the electric light. Some of them, like the clay cylinders found in the ruins of Babylon, are only useful in a historical sense, but many of them are essentially practical for woodcraft.

How to Make a Chucknuck

The slow match or punk rope to fit in the brass cylinder may be made of candle wick or coach wick purchased at the hardware store; such wick is about three-eighths of an inch in diameter. Scout Commissioner John H. Chase of Youngstown,[31] Ohio, suggests that the rope may be made from the wastes of a machine shop or a garage; but one of the best woodsmen I know is Mr. Frederick K. Vreeland, and he uses the apparatus shown by Fig. 34, which is made of the yellow fuse rope, or punk rope, which may be purchased at cigar stores. He fastens a cork in one end of the rope by a wire, he pulls the other end of the rope through the end of the brass cartridge shell which has been filed off for that purpose. The end of the fuse rope must be charred, so as to catch the spark. To get the spark he takes the back of the blade of his knife (Fig. 35), and strikes the bit of flint as you would with flint and steel, holding the charred end of the punk against the flint, as shown by the diagram (Fig. 29). Loose cotton and various vegetable fibers twisted into a rope soaked in water and gunpowder will make good punk when dry.

To Get the Spark

Place the charred end of the rope on the flint, the charred portion about one thirty-second of an inch back of the edge of the flint where the latter is to be struck by the steel; hold the punk in place with the thumb of the left hand, as in the diagram (Fig. 29). Hold the knife about six inches above at an angle of about forty-five degrees from the flint, turn your knife so that the edge of the back of the blade will strike, then come down at an angle about thirty-five degrees with a sharp scraping blow. This should send the spark into the punk at the first or second blow. Now blow the punk until it is all aglow and you are ready to set your tinder afire. Push the punk into the middle of a handful of tinder and blow it until it is aflame, and the deed is done!

All these pocket contrivances for striking fire were formerly known as "striker-lights" or "chucknucks."

[32]

A Substitute for Flint and Steel

The Malays having neither flint nor steel ingeniously substitute for the flint a piece of broken chinaware, and for the steel a bamboo joint, and they produce a spark by striking the broken china against the joint of the bamboo, just as we do with the flint and steel.

[33]

CHAPTER III

HOW TO BUILD A FIRE

HOW TO LAY AND LIGHT A FIRE

AN EXPERIENCE WITH TENDERFEET

MODERN FEAR OF DOING MANUAL LABOR

MATCHES

FIRE-MAKERS AND BABYLONIANS

THE PALPITATING HEART OF THE CAMP

GUMMY FAGOTS OF THE PINE

HOW TO MAKE A FIRE IN WET WEATHER

BACKWOODSMEN'S FIRE

THE NECESSITY OF SMALL KINDLING WOOD

GOOD FIREWOOD

ADVANTAGE OF SPLIT WOOD

FIRE-DOGS

HOW TO OPEN A KNIFE

HOW TO WHITTLE; HOW TO SPLIT A STICK WITH A KNIFE

BONFIRES AND COUNCIL FIRES

CAMP MEETING TORCH FIRES

EXPLODING STONES

CHARACTER IN FIRE

SLOW FIRES, SIGNAL FIRES AND SMUDGES

[34]

[35]

CHAPTER III

HOW TO BUILD A FIRE



"By thy camp-fire they shall know thee."





A party of twenty or thirty men once called at the author's studio and begged that he would go with them on a hike, stating that they intended to cook their dinner out-of-doors. We went on the hike. The author asked the gentlemen to collect the wood for the fire; they did so enthusiastically and heaped up about a quarter of a cord of wood. There was no stick in the pile less than the thickness of one's arm, and many as thick as one's leg. A fine misty rain was falling and everything was damp. While all the other hikers gathered around, one of them carefully lighted a match and applied it to the heap of damp cord wood sticks. Match after match he tried, then turned helplessly to the writer with the remark, "It won't light, sir," and none there saw the humor of the situation!

Had anyone told the writer that from twenty-five to thirty men could be found, none of whom could build a fire, he would have considered the statement as highly improbable, but if he had been told that any intelligent man would try to light cord wood sticks, wet or dry, by applying a match to them, he would have branded the story as utterly beyond belief. It is, however, really astonishing how few people there are who know how to build a fire even when supplied with plenty of fuel and abundant matches.

Matches

It may be well to call the reader's attention to the fact that it takes very little moisture to spoil the scratch patch[36] on a box of safety matches and prevent the match itself from igniting. The so-called parlor match, which snaps when one lights it and often shoots the burning head into one's face or on one's clothes, is too dangerous a match to take into the woods. The bird's-eye match is exceedingly unreliable on the trail, but the old-fashioned, ill-smelling Lucifer match, sometimes called sulphur match, the kind one may secure at the Hudson Bay Trading Post, the kind that comes in blocks and is often packed in tin cans, is the best match for woodcrafters, hunters, explorers, and hikers. Most of the outfitting stores in the big cities either have these matches or can procure them for their customers. When one of these matches is damp it may be dried by running it through one's hair.

Nowadays manual labor seems to be looked upon by everyone more in the light of a disgrace or punishment than as a privilege; nevertheless, it is a privilege to be able to labor, it is a privilege to have the vim, the pep, the desire and the ability to do things. Labor is a necessary attribute[37] of the doer and those who live in the open; no one need attempt so simple a thing as the building of a fire and expect to succeed without labor.

One must use the axe industriously (Figs. 39, 42, and 43) in order to procure fuel for the fire; one must plan the fire carefully with regard to the wind and the inflammable material adjacent; one must collect and select the fuel intelligently.

The shirk, the quitter, or the side-stepper has no place in the open; his habitat is on the Great White Way among the Babylonians of the big cities. He does not even know the joys of a fire; he never sees a fire except when some building is burning. His body is heated by steam radiators, his food is cooked in some mysterious place beyond his ken, and brought to him by subservient waiters. He will be dead and flowers growing on his grave when the real fire-makers are just attaining the full vigor of their manhood.

Captain Belmore Browne says that the trails of the wilderness are its arteries; we may add that all trails proceed from camp or lead to camp, and that the camp-fire is the living, life-giving, palpitating heart of the camp; without it all is dead and lifeless. That is the reason that we of the outdoor brotherhood all love the fire; that is the reason that the odor of burning wood is incense to our nostrils; that is the reason that the writer cannot help talking about it when he should be telling

How to Build a Fire

Do not forget that lighting a fire in hot, dry weather is child's play, but that it takes a real camper to perform the same act in the damp, soggy woods on a cold, raw, rainy day, or when the first damp snow is covering all the branches of the trees and blanketing the moist ground with a slushy mantle of white discomfort! Then it is that fire making[38] brings out all the skill and patience of the woodcrafter; nevertheless when he takes proper care neither rain, snow nor hail can spell failure for him.

Gummy Fagots of the Pine

In the mountains of Pennsylvania the old backwoodsmen, of which there are very few left, invariably build their fires with dry pine, or pitch pine sticks.

With their axe they split a pine log (Fig. 42), then cut it into sticks about a foot long and about the thickness of their own knotted thumbs, or maybe a trifle thicker (Fig. 40); after that they proceed to whittle these sticks, cutting deep shavings (Fig. 37), but using care to leave one end of the shavings adhering to the wood; they go round and round the stick with their knife blade making curled shavings until the piece of kindling looks like one of those toy wooden trees one used to find in his Noah's Ark on Christmas morning (Fig. 37).

When a backwoodsman finishes three or more sticks he sets them up wigwam form (Fig. 38). The three sticks having been cut from the centre of a pine log, are dry and maybe resinous, so all that is necessary to start the flame is to touch a match to the bottom of the curled shavings (Fig. 38).

Before they do this, however, they are careful to have a supply of small slivers of pitch pine, white pine or split pine knots handy (Fig. 36). These they set up around the shaved sticks, maybe adding some hemlock bark, and by the time it is all ablaze they are already putting on larger sticks of ash, black birch, yellow birch, sugar maple or oak.

For be it known that however handy pitch pine is for starting a fire, it is not the material used as fuel in the fire itself, because the heavy smoke from the pitch blackens up the cooking utensils, gives a disagreeable taste to the food,[39]

[40]

[41] spoils the coffee and is not a pleasant accompaniment even for a bonfire.

In the North woods, in the land of the birch trees, green birch bark is universally used as kindling with which to start a fire; green birch bark burns like tar paper. But whether one starts the fire with birch bark, shaved pine sticks or miscellaneous dry wood, one must remember that

Split Wood

Burns much better than wood in its natural form, and that logs from twelve to fourteen inches are best for splitting for fuel (Fig. 42); also one must not forget that in starting a fire the smaller the slivers of kindling wood are made, the easier it is to obtain a flame by the use of a single match (Fig. 36), after which the adding of fuel is a simple matter. A fire must have air to breathe in order to live, that is a draught, consequently kindling piled in the little wigwam shape is frequently used.

Fire-dogs

For an ordinary, unimportant fire the "turkey-lay" (Fig. 54) is handy, but for camp-fires and cooking fires we use andirons on which to rest the wood, but of course in the forests we do not call them andirons. They are not made of iron; they are either logs of green wood or stones and known to woodsmen by the name of "fire-dogs."

While we are on the subject of fire making it may be worth while to call the reader's attention to the fact that every outdoor person should know how to use a pocket knife, a jack-knife or a hunter's knife with the greatest efficiency and the least danger.

To those of us who grew up in the whittling age, it may seem odd or even funny that anyone should deem it necessary[42] to tell how to open a pocket knife. But today I fail to recall to my mind a single boy of my acquaintance who knows how to properly handle a knife or who can whittle a stick with any degree of skill, and yet there are few men in this world with a larger acquaintance among the boys than myself. Not only is this true, but I spend two months of each year in the field with a camp full of boys, showing them how to do the very things with their knives and their axes described in this book.

How to Open a Knife

It is safe to say that when the old-timers were boys themselves, there was not a lad among them who could not whittle with considerable skill and many a twelve year old boy was an adept at the art. I remember with the keenest pleasure the rings, charms and knick-knacks which I carved with a pocket knife before I had reached the scout age of twelve. Today, however, the boys handle their knives so awkwardly as to make the chills run down the back of an onlooker.

In order to properly open a knife, hold it in your left hand, and with the thumbnail of your right hand grasp the blade at the nail notch (Fig. 45) in such a manner that the line of the nail makes a very slight angle; that is, it is as near perpendicular[43] as may be (Fig. 46), otherwise you will bend back your thumbnail until it hurts or breaks. Pull the blade away from your body, at the same time drawing the handle of the knife towards the body (Figs. 47 and 48). Continue this movement until the blade is fully open and points directly from your body (Fig. 49).

Practise this and make it a habit; you will then never be in danger of stabbing yourself during the process of opening your knife—you will open a knife properly and quickly by what is generally termed intuition, but what is really the result of training and habit.

How to Whittle

The age of whittling began with the invention of the pocket knife and reached its climax about 1840 or '50, dying out some time after the Civil War, probably about 1870. All the old whittlers of the whittling age whittled away from the body. If you practise whittling that way it will become a habit.

Indians use a crooked knife and whittle towards the body, but the queer shape of their knife does away with the danger of an accidental stab or slash. Cobblers use a wicked sharp knife and cut towards their person and often are severely slashed by it, and sometimes dangerously wounded, because a big artery runs along the inside of one's leg (Fig. 41½) near where most of the scars on the cobbler's legs appear. When you whittle do not whittle with a stick between your legs as in Fig. 41, and always whittle away from you as in Fig. 44.

How to Split with a Jack-knife

Fig. 40 shows the proper way to use the knife in splitting a stick, so that it will not strain the spring at the back of the[44] handle of the knife, and at the same time it will help you guide the knife blade and tend to make a straight split. Do not try to pry the stick apart with a knife or you will sooner or later break the blade, a serious thing for a wilderness man to do, for it leaves him without one of the most useful tools.

Remember that fine slivers of wood make a safer and more certain start for a fire than paper. All tenderfeet first try dry leaves and dry grass to start their fires. This they do because they are accustomed to the use of paper and naturally seek leaves or hay as a substitute for paper. But experience soon teaches them that leaves and grass make a nasty smudge or a quick, unreliable flame which ofttimes fails to ignite the wood, while, when proper care is used, small slivers of dry wood never fail to give satisfactory results.

There are many sorts of fires used by campers and all are dependent upon the local supply of fuel; in the deforested districts of Korea the people use twisted grass for fuel, on our Western plains the hunters formerly used buffalo chips and now they use cow chips, that is, the dry manure of cattle, with which to build their fires for cooking their meals and boiling their coffee. In the Zurn belt, in Tartary and Central India cattle manure is collected, piled up like cord wood and dried for fuel. A few years ago they used corn on the cob for firewood in Kansas. It goes without saying that buffalo chips are not good for bonfires or any fire where a big flame or illumination is an object.

Bonfires and Council Fires

Are usually much larger than camp-fires, and may be made by heaping the wood up in conical form (Fig. 50) with the kindling all ready for the torch in the center of the pile,[45] or the wood may be piled up log cabin style (Fig. 51) with the kindling underneath the first floor.

In both of these forms there are air spaces purposely left between the sticks of wood, which insure a quick and ready draught the moment the flames start to flicker in the kindling.

The best form of council fire is shown by Fig. 52, and known as the

Camp Meeting Torch

[46] Because it was from a somewhat similar device at a camp meeting in Florida, that the author got the suggestion forhis "torch fire." The platform is made of anything handy and is covered with a thick flooring of sod, sand or clay for the fire-place.

The tower is built exactly similar to the Boy Scout signal towers but on a smaller scale (Fig. 52).

Danger of Exploding Stones

However tempting a smooth rock may look as a convenient spot on which a fire may be built, do not fail to spread a few shovels of sand, earth or clay on the stone as a fire bed, for the damp rock on becoming heated may generate steam and either expand with some violence or burst like a bomb-shell and scatter far and wide the fragments, even endangering the lives of those gathered around the fire.

Character in Fire

The natives of Australia take dry logs, 6 ft. or more in length, and laying them down 3 ft. or 4 ft. apart, set them on fire in several places. Letting shorter logs meet them from the outside, and placing good-sized pebbles around them, they then stretch themselves on the ground and sleep between the two lines of fire, and when the wood is consumed the stones continue for some time to radiate the heat they have previously absorbed. Many tribes of American Indians have their own special fashion of fire building, so that a deserted camp fire will not infrequently reveal the identity of the tribe by which it was made.

Slow Fires

The camper's old method of making a slow fire was also used by housekeepers for their open fire-places, and consisted of placing three logs with their glowing ends together.

[47]

As the ends of the logs burned off the logs were pushed forward, this being continued until the logs were entirely consumed. Three good logs thus arranged will burn all day or all night, but someone must occasionally push them so that their ends come together, when they send their heat from one to the other, backwards and forwards, and thus keep the embers hot (Fig. 53). But who wants to sit up all night watching a fire? I prefer to use the modern method and sleep all night.

Sharpen the ends of two strong heavy stakes each about 5 ft. in length, cut a notch in the rear of each near the top, for the support or back to key into, drive the stakes into the ground about 6 ft. apart. Place three logs one on the other, making a log wall for the back of your fire-place. Next take two shorter logs and use them for fire-dogs, and on these lay another log and the arrangement will be complete. A fire of this kind will burn during the longest night and if skillfully made will cause little trouble. The fire is fed by placing fuel between the front log and the fire-back.

Signal Fires

When the greatest elevations of land are selected the smoke signals may be seen at a distance of from twenty to fifty miles. Signal fires are usually made with dry leaves, grass and weeds or "wiry willows," balsam boughs, pine and cedar boughs, because such material produces great volumes of smoke and may be seen at a long distance. The Apaches have a simple code which might well be adopted by all outdoor people. According to J. W. Powell, Director of U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, the Indians use but three kinds of signals, each of which consists of columns of smoke.

[48]

Alarm

Three or more smoke columns reads impending danger from flood, fire or foe. This signal may be communicated from one camp to another, so as to alarm a large section of the country in remarkably quick time. The greater the haste desired the greater the number of smokes used. These fires are often so hastily made that they may resemble puffs of smoke caused by throwing heaps of grass and leaves upon the embers again and again.

Attention

"This signal is generally made by producing one continuous column and signifies attention for several purposes, viz., when a band had become tired of one locality, or the grass may have been consumed by the ponies, or some other cause necessitated removal, or should an enemy be reported which would require further watching before a decision as to future action would be made. The intention or knowledge of anything unusual would be communicated to neighboring bands by causing one column of smoke to ascend."

Establishment of a Camp, Quiet, Safety

"When a removal of camp has been made, after the signal for Attention has been given, and the party have selected a place where they propose to remain until there may be a necessity or desire for their removal, two columns of smoke are made, to inform their friends that they propose to remain at that place. Two columns are also made at other times during a long continued residence, to inform the neighboring bands that a camp still exists, and that all is favorable and quiet."

[49]

Therefore, Three or more smokes in daylight, or Three or more flames at night, is a signal of alarm, One smoke a signal for attention, Two smokes tells us that all is well, peaceful and happy.

Smoke Signals

The usual way of signalling with smoke is to make a smudge fire of browse or grass and use a blanket as an extinguisher. By covering the fire with the blanket and suddenly removing it, a large globular puff of smoke is made to suddenly appear, and is certain to attract the attention of anyone who happens to be looking toward the site of the fire.

How to Build a Fire on the Snow

If it is practical it is naturally better to shovel away the snow, but personally I have never done this except in case of newly fallen snow. Old snow which is more or less frozen to the ground may be tramped down until it is hard and then covered with a corduroy of sticks for a hearth (Figs. 55 and 56) or with bark (Fig. 57) and on top of this flooring it is a simple matter to build a fire. Use the turkey-"lay" in which one of the sticks acts the part of the fire-dog (Fig. 56).

Don't fail to collect a generous supply of small wood (Fig. 58) and then start the fire as already directed (Fig. 58).

The reader will note that in all these illustrations (Figs. 55, 56, and 57), there is either a log or stone or a bank for a back to the fire-place. When everything is covered with snow it is perfectly safe to use a log for a back (Fig. 56) but on other occasions the log may smoulder for a week and then start a forest fire.

No one but an arrant, thoughtless, selfish Cheechako will use a live growing tree against which to build a fire.[50] A real woodcraft knows that a fire can ruin in a few minutes a mighty forest tree that God himself cannot replace inside of from forty to one hundred years.

While we are talking of building fires in the snow, it may be well to remark that an uninhabitable and inaccessible swamp in the summer is often the best of camping places in the winter time. The water freezes and falls lower and lower, leaving convenient shelves of ice (Fig. 57) for one's larder. The dense woods and brush offer a splendid barrier to the winter winds. Fig. 59 shows an arrangement for a winter camp-fire.

How to Make a Fire in the Rain

Spread a piece of bark on the ground to serve as a hearth on which to start your fire. Seek dry wood by splitting the log and taking the pieces from the center of the wood, keep the wood under cover of your tent, poncho, coat or blanket. Also hold a blanket or some similar thing over the fire while you are lighting it. After the blaze begins to leap and the logs to burn freely, it will practically take a cloud-burst to extinguish it.

[51]

[52]

[53]

CHAPTER IV

HOW TO LAY A GOOD COOKING FIRE

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE ON SHORT RATIONS

THE MOST PRIMITIVE OF COOKING OUTFITS

CAMP POT-HOOKS, THE GALLOW-CROOK, THE POT-CLAW, THE HAKE, THE GIB, THE SPEYGELIA AND THE SASTER

TELEGRAPH WIRE COOKING IMPLEMENTS, WIRE GRID-IRON, SKELETON CAMP STOVE

COOKING FIRES, FIRE-DOGS, ROASTING FIRE-LAY, CAMP-FIRE LAY, BELMORE LAY, FRYING FIRE LAY, BAKING FIRE LAY

THE AURES CRANE

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CHAPTER IV

HOW TO LAY A GOOD COOKING FIRE

No matter where the old camper may be, no matter how long a time may have elapsed since last he slept in the open, no matter how high or low a social or official position he may now occupy, it takes but one whiff of the smoke of an open fire, or one whiff of the aroma of frying bacon, to send him back again to the lone trail. In imagination he will once more be hovering over his little camp-fire in the desert, under the shade of the gloomy pines, mid the snows of Alaska, in the slide rock of the Rockies or mid the pitch pines of the Alleghenies, as the case may be.

That faint hint in the air of burning firewood or the delicious odor of the bacon, for the moment, will not only wipe from his vision his desk, his papers and his office furniture, but also all the artificialities of life. Even the clicking of the typewriter will turn into the sound of clicking hoofs, the streets will become canyons, and the noise of traffic the roar of the mountain torrent!

There is no use talking about it, there is no use arguing about it, there is witchcraft in the smell of the open fire, and all the mysteries and magic of the Arabian Nights dwell in the odor of frying bacon.

Some years ago Mr. Arthur Rice, the Secretary of the Camp-fire Club of America, and Patrick Cleary, a half-breed Indian, with the author, became temporarily separated from their party in the Northern wilds. They found themselves on a lonely wilderness lake surrounded by picture mountains, and dotted with tall rocky islands covered with Christmas trees, giving the whole landscape the appearance[56] of the scenery one sometimes sees painted on drop-curtains for the theatre. Everything in sight was grand, everything was beautiful, everything was built on a generous scale, everything was big, not forgetting the voyagers' appetites!

Unfortunately the provisions were in the missing canoe; diligent search, however, in the bottom of Patrick Cleary's ditty bag disclosed three small, hard, rounded lumps, which weeks before might have been bread; also a handful of tea mixed with smoking tobacco, and that was all! There was no salt, no butter, no pepper, no sugar, no meat, no knives, no forks, no spoons, no cups, no plates, no saucers and no cooking utensils; the party had nothing but a few stone-like lumps of bread and the weird mixture of tea and tobacco with which to appease their big appetites. But in the lake the trout were jumping, and it was not long before the hungry men had secured a fine string of spotted beauties to add to their menu.

Under the roots of a big spruce tree, at the bottom of a cliff on the edge of the lake, a fountain of cold crystal water spouted from the mossy ground. Near this they built a fire while Mr. Rice fashioned a little box of birch bark, filled it with water and placed it over the hot embers by resting the ends of the box on fire-dogs of green wood. Into the water in the birch bark vessel was dumped the tea (and—also tobacco)!

To the amazement and delight of the Indian half-breed, the tea was soon boiling. Meanwhile the half-breed toasted some trout until the fish were black, this being done so that the charcoal or burnt skins might give a flavor to the fish, and in a measure compensate for the lack of salt. The hunks of bread were burned until they were black, not for flavor this time, but in order that the bread might be brittle enough[57] to allow a man to bite into it with no danger of breaking his teeth in the attempt.

To-day it seems to the author that that banquet on that lonely lake, miles from the nearest living human being, was more delicious and more satisfying than any of the feasts of Belshazzar he has since attended in the wonder city of New York.

Therefore, when taking up the subject of cooking fire and camp kitchen, he naturally begins with

The Most Primitive of Cooking Outfits

Consisting of two upright forked sticks and a waugan-stick to lay across from fork to fork over the fire. Or maybe a speygelia-stick thrust slantingly into the ground in front of the fire, or perhaps a saster-pole on which to suspend or from which to dangle, in front of the fire, a hunk of moose meat, venison, mountain sheep, mountain goat, whale blubber, beaver, skunk, rabbit, muskrat, woodchuck, squirrel or whatsoever fortune may send.

Camp Pot-hooks

Are of various forms and designs, but they are not the S shaped things formerly so familiar in the big open fire-places of the old homesteads, neither are they the hated S shaped marks with which the boys of yesterday were wont to struggle and disfigure the pages of their writing books.

If any one of the camp pot-hooks had been drawn in the old-time writing book or copybook, it would have brought down the wrath (with something else) of the old-fashioned school-master, upon the devoted head of the offending pupil. For these pot-hooks are not regular in form and the shape[58] and designs largely depend upon the available material from which they are fashioned, and not a little upon the individual fancy of the camper. For instance the one known as

The Gallow-crook

61, Is not, as the name might imply, a human crook too intimately associated with the gallows, but on the contrary it is a rustic and useful bit of forked stick ( Figs. 60 62 and 63 ) made of a sapling. Fig. 60 shows how to select the sapling and where to cut it below a good sturdy fork. Fig. 61 shows the bit of sapling trimmed down to the proper length and with two forks, one at each end. On the upper fork you will note that one prong is a slender elastic switch. Fig. 62 shows how this switch may be bent down and bound with a string or tape made of green bark, and so fastened to the main stem as to form a loop which will easily slip over the waugan-stick as in Fig. 63 Fig. 62A shows a handy hitch with which to make fast the bark binding.

When the waugan-stick has been thrust through the loop of the gallow-crook, the former is replaced in the crotches of the two forked sticks, as in Fig. 63, and the pot or kettle, pail or bucket, is hooked on to the lower fork. You will note that the lower fork is upon the opposite side of the main stick from that from which the switch prong of the upper fork springs. This arrangement is not necessary to make the pot balance properly over the fire; the same rule holds good for all the other pot-hooks.[D]

The Pot-claw

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[60]

[61] Will be best understood by inspecting the diagrams ( Figs. 64 65 , and 66 ), which show its evolution or gradual growth. By these diagrams you will see the stick is so cut that thefork may be hooked over the waugan-stick and the cooking utensils, pots or kettles may be hung over the fire by slipping their handles into the notch cut in the stick on the side opposite to the fork and near the lower end of the pot-claw. This is a real honest-to-goodness Buckskin or Sourdough pot-hook; it is one that requires little time to manufacture and one that is easily made wherever sticks grow, or wherever "whim" sticks or driftwood may be found heaped upon the shore.

The Hake

Is easier to make than the pot-claw. It is a forked stick like the pot-claw, but in place of the notch near the lower end a nail is driven diagonally into the stick and the kettle hung on the nail ( Figs. 67 and 68 ). The hake possesses the disadvantage of making it necessary for the camper to carry a supply of nails in his kit. No Sourdough on a long and perilous trip loads himself down with nails. A hake, however, is a very good model for Boy Scouts, Girl Pioneers, and hikers of all descriptions who may go camping in the more thickly settled parts of the country.

The Gib

Is possibly a corruption of gibbet, but it is a much more humane implement. It requires a little more time and a little more skill to make a gib ( Fig. 69 ) than it does to fashion the preceding pot-hook. It is a useful hook for stationary camps where one has time to develop more or less intricate cooking equipment. Fig. 69A shows how the two forked sticks are cut to fit together in a splice, and it also shows how this splice is nailed together with a couple of wire nails, and Fig. 70 shows how the wire nails are clinched.

[62]

In a book of this kind the details of all these designs are given not because any one camper is expected to use them all, but because there are times when any one of them may be just the thing required. It is well, however, to say that the most practicable camp pot-hooks are the pot-claw and the hake.

In making a pot-claw care should be taken to cut the notch on the opposite side of the forked branch, and at the other end of the claw, deep enough to hold the handle of the cooking utensils securely.

While the author was on an extended trip in the blustering North land his party had a pot-claw as crooked as a yeggman, and as knotty as a problem in higher mathematics. While there can be no doubt that one of the party made this hoodoo affair it has never yet been decided to whom the credit belongs—because of the innate modesty of the men no one claims the honor. This misshapen pot-claw was responsible for spilling the stew on several occasions, not to speak of losing the boiled rice. Luckily one of the party was a stolid Indian, one a consistent member of the Presbyterian church, one a Scout and one a member of the Society of Friends, consequently the air was not blue and the only remarks made were, "Oh my!" "Bless my soul!" and "Gee willikens!"

The cook in despair put the wicked thing in the fire with muttered hints that the fire might suggest the region where such pot-hooks belong. While it burned and its evil spirit dissolved in smoke, the Indian made a new pot-claw, a respectable pot-claw with a straight character, and a more secure notch. This one by its benign presence brought peace and good will to the camp and showed the necessity of taking pains and using care in the manufacture of even so lowly a thing as a pot-claw.

The camp pot-hooks should be of various lengths; long[63] ones to bring the vessels near the fire where the heat is more intense; short ones to keep the vessels further from the fire so that their contents will not cook but only keep warm; and medium ones for simmering or slow cooking.

The Speygelia

Is not an Italian, but is a long name for a short implement. The speygelia is a forked stick or a notched stick ( Figs. 71 72 , and 73 ), which is either propped up on a forked stick ( Fig. 71 ) and the lower end held down by a stone in such a manner that the fork at the upper end offers a place to hang things over, or in front of the fire, sometimes a notched stick is used in the same manner as Fig. 73 . Where the ground is soft to permit it, the stick is driven diagonally into the earth, which may hold it in place without other support. The speygelia is much used by cow-punchers and other people in places where wood is scarce.

The Saster

The saster is a long pole used in the same manner as the speygelia. Meat is suspended from it in front of the fire to roast (Figs. 74½ and 75), or kettles are suspended from it over the fire to boil water (Fig. 74).

Telegraph Wire Cooking Implements

Many campers are fond of making for themselves cooking utensils improvised from ordinary telegraph wire. In the old time open fire-places of our grandsires' kitchen there were trammels consisting of chains hanging down the chimney on which things were hooked by short pot-hooks to hang over the fire; there were also rakens made of bands of iron with holes punched in them for the attachment of short iron pot-hooks[64] (Fig. 76). With these ancient implements in their minds, some ingenious campers manufacture themselves rakens and short pot-hooks from telegraph wire (Fig. 77). By twisting the wire in a series of short loops, each loop can be made to serve as a place for attaching the pot-hooks as did the holes in the old-fashioned rakens. The advantages they claim for the telegraph wire raken are lightness and its possibility of being readily packed.

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On one of these rakens one may hook the pail as high or as low as one chooses (Fig. 78); not only that but one may (Fig. 79) put a small pail inside the larger one, where later it is full of water, for the purpose of cooking cereal without danger of scorching it.

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The disadvantage of all these implements is that they must be toted wherever one goes, and parts are sure to be lost sooner or later, whereupon the camper must resort to things "with the bark on 'em," like the gallow-crook, the pot-claw, the hake, the gib, the speygelia, or the saster, or[65]

[66]

[67] he may go back to the first principles and sharpen the forks of a green wand and impale thereon the bacon, game or fish that it may be thus toasted over the hot embers (Fig. 80). We do not put meat over the fire because it will burn on the outside before it cooks and the fumes of the smoke will spoil its flavor.

According to Mr. Seton, away up in the barren lands they use the saster with a fan made of a shingle-like piece of wood, fastened with a hitch to a piece of wire and a bit of string; the wind—when it is good-natured—will cause the cord to spin round and round. But the same result is secured with a cord which has been soaked in water to prevent it from burning, and which has also been twisted by spinning the meat with one's hands (Fig. 75). Such a cord will unwind and wind more or less slowly for considerable time, thus causing the meat to expose all sides of its surface to the heat of the roasting fire in front of which it hangs. You will note we say in front; again let us impress upon the reader's mind that he must not hang his meat over the flame. In Fig. 75 the meat is so drawn that one might mistake its position and think it was intended to hang over the fire, whereas the intention is to hang it in front of the fire as in Fig. 74. In the writer's boyhood days it was his great delight to hang an apple by a wet string in front of the open fire, and to watch it spin until the heat sent the juices bubbling through the skin and the apple gradually became thoroughly roasted.

The Gridiron

Campers have been known to be so fastidious as to demand a broiler to go with their kit; at the same time there was enough of the real camper in them to cause them to avoid carrying unwieldy broilers such as are used[68] in our kitchens. Consequently they compromise by packing a handful of telegraph wires of even length with their duffel (Fig. 81), each wire having its ends carefully bent in the form of a hook (Fig. 82), which may be adjusted over two green sticks resting upon two log fire-dogs (Fig. 83), and upon the wires, so arranged, meat and fish may be nicely broiled.

This is not a bad scheme, but the campers should have a little canvas bag in which they may pack the wires, otherwise the camper will sooner or later throw them away rather than be annoyed by losing one every now and then. Figs. 84, 85, 86, 87 and 88 show a little

Skeleton Camp Stove

But if one is going to use the telegraph wire camp stove there is no necessity of carrying a lamp. The stove is made so that it may be taken apart and packed easily and the weight is trifling, but a lamp of any kind, or even a lantern, is a nuisance to carry.

The telegraph wire camp stove, however, may be made by bending the wires as shown in Fig. 90, but the only object in so doing is to develop one's ingenuity, or for economy sake,[69] otherwise one may purchase at the outfitter's folding wire camp broilers for a trifle, made on the same principle and with legs which may be thrust into the ground surrounding the fire, as in Figs. 88 and 89, and, after the broiler is folded in the middle, the legs may be folded back so that it will all make a flat package. But leaving the artificialities of telegraph wire let us go back to the real thing again and talk about laying and lighting a genuine

Camp Cooking Fire

The more carefully the fire is planned and built the more easily will the cooking be accomplished. The first thing to be considered in laying one of these fires is the

Fire-dogs

Which in camp are the same as andirons in the open fire-places of our homes, and used for the same purpose. But domestic andirons are heavy steel bars usually with ornamental brass uprights in front and they would be most unhandy for one to carry upon a camping trip, while it would be the height of absurdity to think of taking andirons on a real hunting or exploring expedition. Therefore, we use green logs, sods or stones for fire-dogs in the wilderness. Frequently we have a back-log against which the fire-dog rests; this back-log is shown in Fig. 91 . In this particular case it acts both as a back-log and a fire-dog. In the plan just above it ( Fig. 92 ), there are two logs side by side which serve the double purpose of fire-dogs and for sides of the kitchen stove ( Fig. 93 ). Fig. 94 shows

The Lay of a Roasting Fire

[70] Sometimes called the round fire. The back is laid up log-cabin style and the front is left open. In the open enclosurethe fire is built by sticks being laid up like those in Fig. 91 . The logs on all three sides radiate the heat and when the meat is hung in front of this, suspended from the end of the saster ( Fig. 74½ ), it is easily and thoroughly roasted.

The Camp-fire

Is built with an eye to two purposes: one is to reflect heat into the open tent in front, and the other is to so construct it that it may last a long time. When one builds a camp-fire one wants to be able to roll up in one's blanket and sleep with the comforting conviction that the fire will last until morning.

The camp-fire is made with two fire-dogs pushed back against a back log (Fig. 95A and B), which form the foundation for the camp-fire. Two upright green sticks C (Fig. 95) are placed in a slanting position and supported by other sticks, D (Fig. 95), the top ends of which rest in notches cut in C stick at E (Fig. 95), and the bottom ends of which are thrust into the ground. Against the upright sticks C, and the logs F are heaped to form the back of the fire. The fire is then built on the two fire-dogs AA, and against the F logs, the latter will burn slowly and at the same time reflect the heat into the open tent front. This same fire is sometimes used for a baking fire, but the real fire for this purpose is made by the

Belmore Lay

Figs. 96 and 97. The first sketch shows the plan and the second the perspective view of the fire. The stove is made by two side logs or fire-dogs over which the fire is built and after it has fallen in, a mass of red hot embers, between the fire-dogs, two logs are laid across the dogs and one log is placed atop, so that the flame then comes up in front of them (Fig. 97) and sends the heat against the bread or bannock.

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[73]

At a convenient distance in front of the fuel logs, a waugan-stick is placed, reaching from one fire-dog to the other.

In wilderness work the frying pan is about the only domestic utensil carried and is used as a toaster, a baker, a broiler, a fryer, and a stew pan all combined. In it the Buckskin man and the Sourdough make their bread, and after the bread has been baked over the coals on the bottom, it is browned nicely on its top by tilting the pans in front of the fire and resting their handles against the waugan-stick (Fig. 97). I have seen the baking fire used from British Columbia to Florida, but it was the explorer, Captain Belmore Browne, who showed me the use of the waugan-stick in connection with the baking fire, hence I have called this the Belmore Lay.

A Frying Fire

Is built between two logs, two rows of stones, or sods ( Figs. 98 99 , and 100 ); between these logs the fire is usually built, using the sides as fire-dogs, or the sticks may be placed in the turkey-lay ( Fig. 100 ), so that the sticks themselves make a fire-dog and allow, for a time, a draught until the fire is burning briskly, after which it settles down to hot embers and is in the proper condition for frying. For be it known that too hot a griddle will set the grease or bacon afire, which may be funny under ordinary circumstances, but when one is shy of bacon it is a serious thing. The

Ordinary Baking Fire Lay

Is shown by Fig. 101 . In this instance, the frying pans being used as reflector ovens are propped up by running sticks through the holes in their handles.

[74]

THE AURES

Is a rustic crane made exactly of the same form as are the cranes of the old-fashioned open fire-places, but ingeniously fashioned from a carefully selected green stick with two forks ( Fig. 102 ). The long end of the main branch is severed at A ( Fig. 102 ), care being taken not to cut through the green bark, B ( Fig. 102 ). The bark of the latter, B, is then bent over the stub, A ( Fig. 102 ), forming a loop, C ( Fig. 103 ), which is lashed with green bark to the main stick and slipped over the upright, D ( Fig. 104 ). The fork at E braces the crane and holds it in a horizontal position, resting on a stub left on D for that purpose. How practicable this thing may be depends altogether upon the time and skill one has at one's disposal. One would hardly use the Aures for a single night camp, but if one were to spend a week in the same camp, it would be well worth while and at the same time very interesting work to manufacture a neat Aures crane for the camp kitchen. The next step in camp kitchen fires will include what might be termed the pit fires, which will be described in the following chapter.

You have been told how to select the firewood, make the kindling and start a fire in the preceding chapter on how to build a fire; all you have to remember now is that in certain particulars all fires are alike; they all must have air to breathe and food to eat or they will not live.

In the case of the fire we do not call the air breath, but we give it a free circulation and call it a draught. Wood is the food that the fire eats and it must be digestible, a fire with indigestion is a fire fed with punky, damp wood carelessly thrown together in place of well-selected dry split wood which the fire can consume cleanly, digest evenly, and at the same time give out the greatest amount of heat.

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To produce a draught the fire must, of course, be raised from the ground, but do not build it in a careless manner like a pile of jack-straws. Such a fire may start all right, but when the supporting sticks have burned away it will fall in a heap and precipitate the cooking utensils into the flames, upsetting the coffee or teapot, and dumping the bacon "from the frying pan into the fire."

Be it man, woman, boy or girl, if he, she or it expects to be a camper, he, or she or it must learn to be orderly and tidy around camp. No matter how soiled one's clothes may be, no matter how grimy one's face may look, the ground around the camp-fire must be clean, and the cooking utensils and fire wood, pot-hooks and waugan-sticks, all orderly and as carefully arranged as if the military officer was expected the next minute to make an inspection.

All my readers must remember that By Their Camp-fire They Will be Known and "sized up" as the real thing or as chumps, duffers, tenderfeet and cheechakos, by the first Sourdough or old-timer who cuts their trails.

[78]

[79]

CHAPTER V

CAMP KITCHENS

CAMP PIT-FIRES, BEAN HOLES

COW-BOY FIRE-HOLE

CHINOOK COOKING FIRE-HOLE

BARBECUE-PITS

THE GOLD DIGGER'S OVEN

THE FERGUSON CAMP STOVE

THE ADOBE OVEN

THE ALTAR CAMPFIRE PLACE

CAMP KITCHEN FOR HIKERS, SCOUTS, EXPLORERS, SURVEYORS, AND HUNTERS

HOW TO COOK MEAT, FISH, AND BREAD WITHOUT POTS, PANS OR STOVES

DRESSING SMALL ANIMALS

HOW TO BARBECUE LARGE ANIMALS

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[81]

CHAPTER V

CAMP KITCHENS

Real camp kitchens are naught but well arranged fire-places with rustic cranes and pot-hooks as already described, but in deforested countries, or on the plains and prairies, pit-fires are much in vogue. The pit itself shelters the fire on the windswept plain, which is doubly necessary because of the unprotected nature of such camping places, and because of the kind of fuel used. Buffalo-chips were formerly used on the Western plains, but they are now superseded by cattle chips. The buffalo-chip fire was the cooking fire of the Buckskin-clad long-haired plainsmen and the equally picturesque cowboy; but the buffalo herds have long since hit the trail over the Great Divide where all tracks point one way, the sound of the thunder of their feet has died away forever, as has also the whoop of the painted Indians. The romantic and picturesque plainsmen and the wild and rollicking cowboys have followed the herds of buffalo and the long lines of prairie schooners are a thing of the past, but the pit-fires of the hunters are still in use.

The Most Simple Pit-fire

Is a shallow trench dug in the ground, on each side of which two logs are placed; in the pit between the logs a fire is built ( Fig. 105 ), but probably the most celebrated pit-fire is the fireless cooker of the camp, known and loved by all under the name of

The Bean Hole

Fig. 106 shows a half section of a bean hole lined with stones. The bean hole may, however, be lined with clay or[82] simply the damp earth left in its natural state. This pit-fire place is used differently from the preceding one, for in the bean hole the fire is built and burns until the sides are heated good and hot, then the fire is removed and the bean pot put in place, after which the whole thing is covered up with ashes and earth and allowed to cook at its leisure.

The Cowboy Pit-fire

The cowboy pit-fire is simply a trench dug in the earth (Fig. 107), with a basin-shaped hole at the beginning. When obtainable, sticks are laid across the trench and sods laid upon the top of the sticks. Fig. 107 shows a section of view of the pit-fire and trench chimney, and Fig. 108 shows the top view of the same.

In removing the sod one should be careful not to break them, then even though there be no sticks one may be able to cover the draught chimney with the sods themselves by allowing them to bridge the trench. At the end of the trench the sods are built up, making a short smokestack.

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The Chinook Fire-pit

The chinook fire-pit is one which is used in the northwestern part of the United States, and seems to be a combination of the ordinary camp fire-dogs with cross logs and the cowboy fire-pit. Fig. 109 shows a perspective view of this lay. Fig. 110 shows the top view of plan of the lay. Fig. 111 shows a steeper perspective view than that of Fig. 109, and Fig. 112 shows a sectional view. By examining the sectional view and also the deeper perspective view, as well as the plan, you will note that the two logs are placed across the fire-dogs with space between. The back-log is placed upon the top of another back-log A and B (Fig. 112). The fire-dogs have[83]

[84]

[85] their ends shoved against the bottom back-logs B, the two back-logs are kept in place by the stakes C, C. Between the two top logs D and A (Figs. 112 and 110), the smaller fuel or split wood is placed.

As the fire burns the hot coals drop into the pit, and when sufficient quantity of embers are there they may be raked forward and the frying pan placed on top of them (Fig. 112). The chinook fire is good for baking, frying, broiling, toasting, and is an excellent all-around kitchen camp stove.

The Hobo

Is carelessly built, a fire-place usually surrounding a shallow pit, the sides built up with sods or stones. The hobo answers for a hasty fire over which to boil the kettle ( Fig. 113 ).

At the old-fashioned barbecue where our ancestors roasted whole oxen, the ox was placed on a huge spit, which was turned with a crank handle, very similar to the old-fashioned well handle as used with a rope or chain and bucket.

The Barbecue-pit

Is used at those feasts ( Fig. 114 ), where they broil or roast a whole sheep, deer or pig. At a late meet of the Camp-fire Club of America they thus barbecued a pig.

The fire-pit is about four feet wide and four feet deep and is long enough (Fig. 114) to allow a fire to be built at each end of the pit, there being no fire under the meat itself for the very good reason that the melted fat would drop into the fire, cause it to blaze up, smoke and spoil the meat.

The late Homer Davenport (the old-time and famous cartoonist) some years ago gave a barbecue at his wild animal farm in New Jersey. When Davenport was not drawing cartoons he was raising wild animals. At the Davenport[86] barbecue there was a fire-pit dug in the side of the bank (Fig. 115); such an arrangement is known as

The Bank-pit

In the diagram it will be seen that the carcass is fastened to a spit of green wood, which runs thru a hole in a cross log and fits in the socket D in the bottom log; the spit is turned by handles arranged like A, B or C. The pit is lined with either stones or bricks, which are heated by a roaring big fire until hot enough to bake the meat.

The Gold Digger

[87] Is another ban