OUT OF DOORS OUT OF DOORS BY EMERSON HOUGH NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY EMERSON HOUGH COPYRIGHT, igis, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO J. B. H. 20371, CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. YOUR VACATION 3 II. THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT 31 III. VACATION NUISANCES: How TO PREVENT THEM . 61 IV. IN THE JUNK CLOSET 81 V. THE WOMAN IN CAMP 109 VI. UNCLE SAM'S SHOES 129 VII. MOUNTAIN CAMPING 143 VIII. YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT 167 IX. HINTS AND POINTS ON TROUT-FISHING .... 189 X. YOUR BIRD DOG: How TO USE HLM . .'. . . 211 XI. YOUR GUN: How TO HANDLE IT 235 XII. YOUR CAMPFIRE How TO USE IT 253 XIII. GETTING LOST AND WHAT TO Do ABOUT IT ... 269 XIV. THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION 285 VII I YOUR VACATION I YOUR VACATION HOW and where shall one spend the summer vacation? The answer to that is not so easily to be read in the stars as it is in the pocketbook. Having arranged the elemental, general or fundamental principles of the proposition with the boss, the next thing to do is to consult the ultimate oracle which carries the coin. Sometimes that oracle says that you must be content with a week or so at some farm not far from the city, where the farmer has grown too tired to work and so runs a "resort," mostly by his wife's labor, he himself doing little but tell how good the fishing used to be. There are grades in the country farm and the country resort, all nicely adjusted to catch the vacation dollar. But after all a hammock is a hammock, and almost any place where you have leisure is good enough for lark- ing if you are young, or for loafing and smoking if you are old. You can board in a resort for a dollar a day, or ascend the price scale until you pay four hundred a month for a cottage in the North woods, 3 OUT OF DOORS where papa gets out almost every other Saturday night if he has luck and does not like it better in the city. As to localities, there never was any country laid out better for vacation purposes than these same United States. All the way from Maine to Oregon there is a grand summer country lying ready and waiting for you, and in that country you can get al- most any sort of game you want, from log cabin or tent to cottage or swell hotel. Summer resorting has been brought to a science in every one of these Northern pine countries where lakes and streams are numerous. From Allegash to Glacier Park, from Manitowish to the Rogue River Valley, even in upper Dakota or even in lower Saskatchewan or Alberta you will find a summer country waiting for you, and in it some person or persons who have made ready for your coming, generally minded to transfer your coin from your pockets to their own. The ability to scent a round iron dollar in any weather is not confined to the East or the Middle West. Even in the remotest fastnesses of the Rockies you will find that your vacation has been all thought out and planned for you by someone on the ground. There has always been a fascination for Eastern folk in the ranch life of the West. Each year there are many Western resorts advertised as ranches, which 4 YOUR VACATION offer the attractions of horseback riding, fishing, etc. One such circular comes from the Big Horn Moun- tains, as an instance, and there are others from differ- ent parts of Colorado. There is no better exercise than horseback riding^ and there is no bluer sky or better air than that of the high plains or the foothills or the mountains. The guides out there will tell you how abundant the big game used to be, and how large the trout once were. At least the mountains are as abundant and large as they ever were, as restful and logical and consoling and rejuvenating. It is hard to beat the mountains for a vacation, if the oracle of your pocketbook allows the thought. Most of us go North in the summertime rather than West, in part because of the change of climate, but more because of a proximity to the larger Eastern cities of the attractive vacation countries of the North woods. Perhaps you may pass your week or two weeks, your month or two months, in some Northern country where once there were pine forests, and where yet the trees stand tall and the water runs clear and cold, and you need a blanket at night. This is not to say that only Northern folk have summer vacations, and that all Northern folk go north. There are many mountain districts in the Southern states which are delightful in the summertime; and all along Cali- fornia the summer seashore life equals that of the 5 OUT OF DOORS winter season which is better known to the Northern tourists who go thither. Whatever be your choice of a vacation ground you go there as a transient. Perhaps you go to a large hotel more or less badly run, or to a small one yet worse managed. There is benefit even in that, al- though you will put up with inconveniences there that you would not tolerate at home bad beds, bad food, bad water, bad service, and a certain amount of danger from disease. It is only the loyalty of vacation folk to the vacation idea which sometimes makes them stoutly asseverate that they have had a perfectly bully time when their, time would have been just as bully had they stayed at home in a cool cellar, or camped out near the bathtub. Everyone to his own taste and in accordance with his own means in these matters. To me it seems an easy guess that a vacation will be better if it af- fords an absolute change of scene and manner of life. Moreover, one will get more good out of a vacation not passed in a crowd. Your family, for instance, will rest better if you have a little cottage or a big tent all of your own than if you divide two or three small rooms in an hotel. Perhaps they will enjoy it yet more if you go farther into the woods and turn your hotel cottage into a log camp on some less frequented water. Or, as you advance in vacation skill, and as 6 YOUR VACATION your wife becomes used to life in the woods which the kids always like without fail you may shake off civilization altogether and take to the tent where you do your own cooking and your own work. This latter proposition is more apt to appeal to bachelors or to young men who go in small parties, although it is entirely practical for a family. Again, everyone to his taste ; but to me it seems that the tired business man can get about as good a run for his vacation money in this way as in any other. If you go to a summer resort you don't need any hints, points or suggestions. Just take all the money you have, borrow some more, give it all to the hotel people and then walk home and try to forget it. The main memory you will have of your vacation is the general feeling that other people have more diamonds than your family, and your wife's assurance that she can't see why that Smith girl should be asked oftener to dance than your own daughter Eileen. If, however, you wish to take the plunge into camp life in your vacation season there are some things which perhaps you might well consider in advance. For instance, what is the best all-around tent? The answer to that is that there is no best all-around tent, any more than there is a best all-around rifle or shotgun. It all depends on where you go and what you do. 7 OUT OF DOORS The vacation en famille, more or less permanent in location, is apt to indicate a wall tent as the vacation home. Indeed, the wall tent is the typical tent of the white man. He built it as near like a house as he could, with upright sides and ends and a sloping roof running down from a ridge pole. You can get wall tents from six feet square up to forty feet long. Some of them have board floors and boarded sides, and sidewalks in front of them. In some of them you can stand up, and in others you cannot. Some of them are heavy and some are light. In short, in this one model of tent you have a great range of choice. The main virtue of the wall tent is its roominess. It will do as a sort of house if it rains. You can keep it warm if it grows cold, and by putting a fly over it you can keep it fairly cool when the weather is warm outside. But at the same time most wall tents are close and stuffy. The air does not seep through canvas, especially when it is damp. You will have to use the wall tent as you do the hall bedroom at home open the windows and leave the door ajar. That means, perhaps, mosquitoes, which in turn opens up a series of questions. Tent-makers have improved in their work steadily, but in one essential they seem not to have improved at all that of ventilation. Some maker of everyday wall tents is going to make a big business success one 8 YOUR VACATION of these days by building wall tents with good ventilat- ing windows in them ; windows covered with mosquito bars. At present it is only in the specially made tents that you can get good ventilation or good protection against insect pests. The mosquito pest has spoiled many a vacation for a woman or even a man. If you do not sleep per- fectly at night your vacation is a failure. As a general rule it is not enough to have head nets to wear at night. That is an uncomfortable way of putting in the night. Your whole tent should be mosquito-proof if you are in the mosquito country. Most city folk think it is enough to drape a mosquito bar carelessly across the front of the tent. Perhaps they close half of the open end of the tent. That means that they swelter and suffocate if the weather is warm, because very likely the tent is not provided with mosquito-proof ventilating windows. You can buy a tent which has a bobbinet front. Again you can buy an inside tent of mosquito netting or cheesecloth which can be tied to the ridge pole inside, and dropped down over the beds at night. All this shuts off a certain amount of air. In general, there- fore, it is a good hint to study your wall tent and its possibilities before you adopt it as your vacation home. Of the methods above suggested that of the inside OUT OF DOORS net is the best. The edges of this inner tent should be heavily shotted, so that it will lie close to the floor. You can help this out by putting the rod cases, or articles of furniture, on the edges of the tent netting. Of course, you have to lift the edge of this net when you come in at the tent door, and, of course, then some mosquitoes come in with you. And of one general proposition you may rest pretty well assured no tent is mosquito-proof which does not have a floor sewn into it. The best sod cloth and inside net ar- rangement you can devise will let some mosquitoes in around the edges in spite of all, unless the floor is sewn to the walls of the tent. It is just as well to hearken a bit about this mosquito business, for your comfort in camp in the average wilderness vacation is hurt more by mosquitoes than it is by cold or rain. Now there are men who live in these countries all the time and carry on work. In far-off Alaska, all over the Rocky Mountains, in the country of the wet Pacific slope far to the north where mosquitoes swarm in millions and constitute a pest such as is not known by average Easterners, men live and work, do prospecting, mining, engineering, rail- road building, packing, traveling, not as sport but as a business. They are obliged to sleep at night and sleep comfortably, or they could not carry on their work. Naturally it is to some of these professions 10 YOUR VACATION that we might well turn to get knowledge on the mosquito question. The general principles of the ideal mosquito tent have been accepted by Eastern manufacturers, but the most perfect mosquito tent I ever saw I ran across this summer for the first time. It was made in a Western city, after a design said to have been invented by a member of the Geological Survey in Alaska. If it will work in Alaska it will anywhere. The material was not of heavy duck, but a light Egyptian cotton sometimes called balloon silk. In size seven by seven, very high in the ridge pole and on the walls, the tent in its bag weighs only about twelve pounds. A light waterproof floor is sewn into it. Both ends are sewn into it. On each side there are two large netted win- dows, affording abundant ventilation. There are flaps arranged for these windows which can be buttoned down in case of rain. In each end of this tent there is yet another large window for ventilation. The roof projects three or four inches all around over the walls, making eaves which keep the water out of the open windows in case of rain. The front door is not a door at all, but a hole, round, and not triangular. This hole is fitted with a sleeve, like the trap of a fyke-net, the sleeve, or funnel, itself being made of light material. You crawl through this hole and, so to speak, pull it ii OUT OF DOORS in after you and tie a knot in it. At least there is a puckering string by which you can close the bag which makes the entrance of the tent. Once inside it, you have a large, roomy house in which you can stand up with comfort, lay down your beds in comfort, and do light housekeeping. No mosquito can get at you unless you brought it in on your clothes. In case you have done that you can put a wet sock into opera- tion. At first you will think the tent a little close, but soon will see that the ventilation is perfect. There are variants of this mosquito tent used in Alaska, some of them A tents of heavy duck provided with one window, high-up, mankillers of the worst type. But the tent made as above is practical. It can be pitched rather quickly. Make your bed of boughs or leaves or whatever you can get on the ground. Throw your tent on top of it. Peg the bottom out loosely at each corner. You do not put the ridge pole inside the tent at all. The roof runs up in a cone, in which is a line of grommets, or big eyelets let in the canvas. You can run a rope through this, or lash the top to a ridge pole above the tent. Use two crotches at each end of your ridge pole, and roughly hoist your tent to its full height. Crawl inside, throw your war bag into one corner, your bedroll in the other and have your chum do the same to his. This will hold the floor in shape well enough for the night, and 12 YOUR VACATION it is all the work of only a few moments. If your camp is permanent you can take more pains with the pitching. You can buy a tent like this in one-man, two-men or four-men size, and the largest will not weigh more than the little A tent of heavy duck which you used to use for smothering purposes on hot nights. I am strong for this wall tent, much as I dislike wall tents in general, because it has abundant window space in it, and because it will afford a good night's sleep in any weather or any amount of mosqui- toes. So, if you plan tent life in the North woods, you might do very well to keep your eye on this sort of wall tent. In some of the far Northern countries mosquitoes come in assorted sizes, some so large that they will bite through a rubber glove and others so small that they will go directly through an ordinary mosquito bar. I think that even in our lower latitudes a good many mosquitoes will crawl through the ordinary mosquito bar. Bobbinet is better, and English cheese- cloth is still better. A good bed net is made with a canvas top, say three feet by six, with shotted sides six or eight feet deep, made of cheesecloth. It sounds a little stuffy, but it keeps them out. In northwestern Canada travelers use what they call a mosquito tent. It is not much different from a very large bed net. It is pitched with a ridge pole, 13 OUT OF DOORS and stands about three feet high. You erect this over your bed and crawl in under it. The walls are of cheesecloth, or bobbinet. This gives you good air and protects you from dew as well as mosquitoes. You should not forget your fly dope, of course, whether you be angler or camper, but in very bad fly country dope is no defense you will have to use netting or a mosquito tent. In Africa the safari out- fitters give you bed nets which are slung from the roof of the tent, the sides dropping down around your bed. Your tent boy tucks in the edges when you go to sleep. That is all right, unless you get the netting loose during the night. The beauty of the mosquito tent above outlined is that you don't get the netting loose. Another great advantage is that you do not hear the buzz of the mosquitoes close about your ears, as you are bound to do if you use a bed net. You can get tents in all sorts and shapes embodying the best of the foregoing principles, sometimes with the floor sewed in and sometimes with inside nets rigged to drop down all around. I tried one of these small shelter tents, triangular in shape, running down to a point behind, last fall on a hunt where mosquitoes were bad. I fitted the tent with a net of bobbinet. There was no floor sewn to the tent. Two of us oc- cupied this tent and we did our best to keep out the mosquitoes. They got at us in spite of all. Such a 14 YOUR VACATION tent will do in good country and good weather where there are few mosquitoes, and where the transporta- tion is so bad that you cannot have a better tent. The argument for it ends about there. It is better on paper than on the ground. As much is true of many other patent inventions, ingenious as make-shifts, but not accepted by the professional outdoor men as useful in everyday work. If you are walking and carrying all your own outfit, and like to think you are pretty hardy, and are not apt to be much bothered by insects, you can take one of these little tents, which only weighs four or five pounds. In good weather condi- tions such a tent is comfortable with a campfire in front of it. In bad weather conditions it is not com- fortable at all, and as a summer home or a vacation rendezvous it is not to be commended. Of course, all these matters bring us to the two basic factors in any vacation the pocketbook and the transportation. The sort of transport you have must determine to some extent the sort of vacation you are going to have if you are to live in camp. In a dry country, almost any sort of tent will do you, and the one which is most open to the air is the best one for you. There are many forms of these shelter tents in open-front models. One is called the baker tent, because its roof and walls are set at the angles of a reflector oven. It is a healthful and pleasant tent 15 OUT OF DOORS even in cold weather, for you can have a good fire in front of it and so keep warm. Your catalog will show you such tents also made with porches and with floors sewed in. Perhaps you can leave the flap open and put in a door of your own made of bobbinet or cheesecloth. The main thing is to get all the air at night you possibly can. The better your transporta- tion facilities the better your tent may be. Men live in tents all through the summer in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Labrador, Alaska, the subarctic country of the Yukon because they know how to live there. By using a little judgment, therefore, you also will be able to live out of doors in comfort in your selected country in almost any sort of conditions which are apt to occur. In the West I have always liked the Indian lodge as the best outdoor house. That is the Indian's basic idea of a tent as against the wall tent which the white man makes. One is conical and the other rectangular. But the tepee is by no means mosquito-proof, even though sometimes filled with smoke at night. Of course, you could rig bed nets in a tepee as well as in any other kind of a tent. Ventilation in a tepee is better than in the white man's tent, and it is roomy and comfortable. At the same time, it is bulky and heavy, and, in fact, impossible for the average vaca- tion. If I were going into the Rockies for a perma- 16 YOUR VACATION nent camp, I would use a tepee, because I think it is the most practical of the aboriginal homes. Some men do not like them. They are, of course, out x of the question for the average camper in the East or North. Indeed, they are not much used by vacation people anywhere. Your vacation home ought to allow comfort in any sort of weather, and sometimes the weather gets wet and cold in summer. The worst thing about a wall tent, next to its ventilation, is the difficulty of getting it dry and warm. For this reason an ingenious man has invented a wall tent in which one whole side lifts up into a porch, so that you can have a fire in front. Of course, you can have a fire in a tepee right on the floor. Or you can have a stove in your wall tent, but to my mind a stove in any tent except in extreme cold weather ought to be considered a capital offense. It makes the tent still more stuffy and hot. In the average camp stove the fire goes out about as fast as you build it, and it is practically impossible to keep a fire in one of them over night. The average summer camp will not need a camp stove unless it is used out in the open clear away from the tent; which of itself is also more or less criminal in view of the pleasure of cooking at the open fire. This, however, must be said with qualification ; for in some countries you cannot get wood for campfire, and so perforce 17 OUT OF DOORS must have a stove, even though you carry it on your own back. So, always considering transportation and personnel of your party and the experience of the weakest mem- ber in outdoor life, you will have to select your tent, closed or open- face, in accordance with your guess as to what the weather and mosquitoes are going to do to you. The open-face tent is a sort of fad and consid- ered the correct thing by some men who have not thought much about it, and by others who have thought a great deal about it. A quarter of a century or more ago there was an old woodsman by the name of Sears who wrote over the name Nessmuk, an in- genious old, solitary woods-rat who had ideas of his own, and who was the founder and forerunner of the modern school of camping life. Mr. Nessmuk in- vented a hunting-knife, a hunting-axe, a packsack, a manner of building a campfire and a manner of pitch- ing a tent. He made his tent open in front with sides and roof converging to a low wall at the rear. He built a little frame of poles, and tacked his light drilling onto this, the front opening being about four feet in height, the tent itself being intended as a sleeping shelter. Such a tent is not much good in case of rain, but the old woodsman managed to make it do by means of shelters of boughs at the sides. It took a little while to fix this tent, but the whole affair IS YOUR VACATION could be taken down and packed with little trouble. Such a tent can be made quite warm in cold weather if you know how to build a lasting campfire in front of it. The baker tent, and indeed all the open-face tents, are modified forms of the old Nessmuk bivouac shelter. You certainly sleep well in such a shelter; for you are warm and you breathe good air. Besides these square-front open-face models there are many sorts of single-pole, conical or pyramid tents which can be put up quickly. The miner's tent is the simplest of these a broad base pyramid, with a single upright center pole inside. It is very quickly pitched, and is very compact when made of the light modern materials and not in heavy duck. This is a modifica- tion of the Sibley tent, which was a modification of the tepee. The door is a flap in the side, the opening running not quite to the top of the tent. Such a tent will keep off rain, and it is all right for men who are accustomed to living simply in the open or who are traveling about from day to day. An Eastern outfitter makes a round tent, with a single center pole and a hood built around an iron ring a modification of the old Indian tepee idea. A very decent, permanent camp can be built with one of these tents, but they are hard to put up and require a large number of pins and ropes. 19 OUT OF DOORS An ingenious mind undertook to make a tent which would be a cross between the wall tent, the A tent and the single-pole, or miner's tent Moreover, he did it too, and made a very effective tent which has about as much room in the right place, weight for weight, as any pattern yet cut. This tent has a single upright pole which is used in the front end. The roof runs down to a low wall at the rear. The sides run down from the peak like those of an A tent, merging into the wall behind. The floor of this tent is square, the front has two flaps which meet in the middle, and over it there can be used a triangular fly, which can be shifted in front and used as a shelter, or porch, if required. Such a tent can be easily made mosquito- proof as any. It can be used as an open-front camp or as a closed tent. It ought to be called the three-in- one tent, for it has some of the advantages of each of the three types which it embodies. For eight years an old comrade and myself used these tents in our summer vacations, some weeks in extent, and we found them very practical. Of course, there is not much room in such a tent for ladies who are particu- lar regarding their costumes. Indeed nearly all tents except the wall tent are made for men and not for women. You can make a good enough bivouac tent out of a tarpaulin, or tent fly, stretched lean-to fashion, 20 YOUR VACATION or in the fashion of a lean-to with the roof or porch in front, all depending on the frame you use in stretch- ing. Or you can buy such a tent already cut, with side walls let onto it, if you prefer. And, of course, if your transportation is bad, you can use instead of heavy canvas a sheet of the light balloon silk, or Egyptian cotton, of which more and more tents are made today. The A tent is very simple, indeed, about as practical as anything for general travel under a compromise of. average wilderness conditions. An A tent can be just as stuffy as a wall tent, although it does not weigh quite so much. Therefore look to the windows and the mosquito defenses, if you are going in fly country. The A tent, however, used to require a ridge pole and two end poles, and the excellence of the pitching depended on the fit of these poles. Of course, you can't always have tent poles along. Therefore, the A tent has come largely to be made with the rope ridge pole. The rope ridge pole is not quite as good for shedding rain, but it is simple and handy. By its use you can quickly pitch the tent between a couple of trees; or you can peg out the end ropes and lift the tent by using a couple of poles as shears at each end, tightening it all you like a simple and speedy process. 21 OUT OF DOORS But not even a simple A tent or wedge tent was left unmolested in its model. Along came a man who shortened the ridge pole of the seven-foot A tent to a couple of feet, sewed a short permanent ridge pole into the top, cut the sides slopping every way from this short ridge pole, and hung the whole thing up by a rope from the top, like a bird-cage. This also was a simple canvas house, light, portable, and dispensing with considerable useless canvas. Some canoeists took to using this tent. I presume you could call it a trapeze tent, although I have never known it to have that name. Now your canoeist, although the most sybaritic creature on earth, likes to consider himself very hardy, so he makes his tent as sma'll and low and inconvenient as he can. This trapeze-bar short ridge pole did not leave much room inside the abbreviated tent, whose door sometimes was so low that a fellow had to crawl in. So the ingenious outfitters who cater to the canoe trade built a big circular end in the back of this sort of tent. It added immensely to the floor space inside. Such a tent in balloon silk may be seen in a good many canoe camps. I have never seen one arranged with windows for ventilation. And once more I speak loudly for the window in the tent, and plenty of it. You will see that the general tendency in modern tents seems to be toward light material and toward 22 YOUR VACATION the abolishment of poles. Tent poles are a nuisance. I knew a Chicago man not long ago who had been in the Rockies and who wanted a tepee in the backyard for his children. He sent all the way to Japan to get a set of bamboo poles for his tepee, and when they came they were broken all to pieces. Then he sent to Mon- tana and imported a carload of tepee poles from an Indian village. We all remember the ridge pole of the old wall tent which used to stick out behind the wagon when we went away on a family picnic. That left the tail-gate of the wagon down, and everything spilled out. We do things better now. We shorten our ridge pole, lighten our tents, and run to ropes rather than poles. And all the time, although we have not yet learned the virtue of windows, we trend to- ward open- face tents with plenty of air. For once the fad or fashion is a good one. In dry country like that of the eastern slope of the Rockies the best man's country and the best out-of- door country to be found anywhere on the globe outdoor workers did not use any tent at all, but spread down their blankets with tarpaulin under and over. Your outfitter will sell you a tarpaulin now arranged with rings and snaps, so that you can make a very good bed right on the ground. This is hardly a good suggestion, however, for the tired business man who has his whole family along. 23 OUT OF DOORS In general, on your camping trip, get as far from home as your pocketbook will let you, and then build as good a camp as you can in as good a place as you can find. Even if you are going two men in a canoe you can outfit for camping in absolute comfort. If you can have a wagon to carry your duffie, you can carry a whole village of modern tents today. If you have a pack train, you can take an Indian lodge, a wall tent, an A tent, a baker tent, a miner's tent, or any one of a dozen other combination models, any one of which will probably do you very well. Perhaps you will find some old shack, or log cabin, which you can use, for bad weather at least. It depends on your transportation. Two persons in any tent make enough, more than enough if one of them snores. If there are several in the party, two or three tents are far better than one. Your vacation will do you most good if you have a little time and space and solitude all to yourself. Lastly, if you have not got just the hints you want as to your summer home, you can have a great deal of pleasure in designing a special tent model all your own, and you certainly will find some manufacturer ready to make it and list it in his catalog. One ardent canoeist, for instance, devised him a little conical tent like a tepee, with a hole cut in the side not running clear to the ground or clear to the top. This was a 24 YOUR VACATION single pole tent. The flap could be raised and used as a sort of porch. One could make a fire in front of this tent and get some good of it, or could easily de- fend it against mosquitoes provided it had a sewn-in floor. Still another man devised a tent with steep roof and sides to shed snow. He pitched it usually on the trapeze or bird-cage fashion, the ridge pole being short and permanent. Then there are little gipsy tents, pitched over bows like wagon covers a sort of thing not seen in this country, although sometimes used by the nomads in Europe. This is something like the dome-topped bark lodge of the Chippewas, but much smaller. And while speaking of the same Chippewas, did you ever see a party of them go into camp on the trail? They have no skin covers for their lodge, not even any canvas, let alone balloon silk nothing but mats woven out of reeds. But in a few minutes the women will have some springy poles cut and ends in the grounds. Then they bend the tops over to- gether and fasten them with bark, three or four sets of these rafters, connected by a pole on top to stiffen them. Perhaps they lash a pole or so alongside. As this progresses, another woman will throw mats across the top. In a few moments they will have up a house which looks as though it had always been there. There is a smoke-hole in the roof at the middle. In fifteen minutes after they have thrown down their packs you 25 OUT OF DOORS can be sitting in a very smoky interior with eight dirty children and nineteen dogs running over you, and feel quite hardy and sporty. You can add to the excitement if you happen to have a banana or some taffy along. There are volumes, and very good ones too, inter- esting and useful, written in the way of advice, hints and suggestions to the outdoor man going into camp. No doubt you will get additional ideas from these. At first you will believe everything you read, but after a while you will get over that. I remember once having heard a girl in a musical comedy sing a little song. She must have been a peach, for I remember her yet, also the words of her song, which ran in the chorus. I read it in the book, in my little lesson book I read it in the book and it must be so. You can read a great many things in your lesson book before you leave home for your vacation, and about the best part of the vacation out of doors is in preparing for it. But the great lesson book for you will be the out of doors itself. You will have your best fun out of meeting actual conditions of nature with your own wits and your own energy. The best way is not to take any man's dictum as to what you want to do or how you want to do it. Figure it out 26 YOUR VACATION for yourself. I can remember as some of the keenest delights of my life the long list of supposed neces- saries which my brother and I used to figure out some time in January when we were getting ready for our great adventure in July a trip all of six miles into the wilderness of a farming country. It is never too early to plan for vacation. The average vacationist may read about camp life and yet not care to tackle it. A great many do tackle it and wish they had not done so. Sometimes, how- ever, even delicately reared city women have learned to like the carefree and soap free life of the camp in the wilderness. One thing is sure, a vacation in camp, certainly at least in a judiciously selected and well con- structed camp, will do you a great deal more physical good than a vacation spent in a summer-resort hotel, no matter how expensive the latter may be. The more primitive your summer resort, the better it is apt to be for you. What you need is a change. No man can live in the city, indeed no man can undergo the high pressure of modern business in any community, and not get a case of nerves at least once a year. His wife will get nervous, his children will be nervous, the whole family will grow more and more nervous every generation and every year in each generation. Neurasthenia, nerve exhaustion, mental collapse, are becoming more and more common in American busi- 27 OUT OF DOORS ness and social life. We work entirely too hard, speed up entirely too much. No amount of drugs, no amount of stimulants will ever cure that sort of thing. For the nerve-broken man or woman the wise doctor would prescribe just one treatment no drugs, no stimulants, just sunshine and sleep and oxygen and good food, and freedom from all care. If some of these gener- ally tired chaps, some of these generally harassed women could get out in camp in the wilderness some- where for a few weeks, they would get a better run for their money than perhaps they could in any other way. At least, that is the hint which of all these seems most worth while. II THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT II THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT THERE is no purchaser on earth whose needs and notions are better studied or better sup- plied than are those of the American sports- man. There are many firms which annually put out catalogs of two or three hundred pages illustrating and describing hundreds and thousands of articles of interest or use to the sportsman. These big mail- order catalogs are best sellers in the best sense of the word. A man may send back a spring bonnet or a piano he has bought by mail, but he is pretty sure to keep any article of sporting gear which he has purchased in the same way. Some of these myriad articles are useful and some are not. You cannot possibly take along with you into the country all the things you see advertised, but perhaps like others who go vagabonding, you are fond of talking about your outfit. This latter is a most elastic term. A sportsman's outfit is like the Oxford dictionary they never get done with the compilation. OUT OF DOORS Take, for instance, the subject of packbags. Even if you are not going on a tramping trip you will have some kind of warbag or packsack to carry your cloth- ing and odds and ends. The more experienced you are the less apt you are to take along a trunk, or even a valise, and as the small boy said in his composition, "There are many kinds of packbags too numerous to mention." Guides in the Adirondacks and Maine still use the pack-basket, which is practically unknown in the West. The professional woodsman of the Western pine coun- try uses a capacious bag nearly square in shape, with a flap which buckles over. This bag has shoulder straps and usually a tump strap as well. A profes- sional cruiser will get eighty pounds of flour, bacon and odds and ends into one. The sportsman who has a larger number of knickknacks will find that such a bag, while holding them all, will make a jumble of them all, the thing you want being always at the bottom of the bag. Moreover, this is a shapeless, disreputable sort of package. If you wish something more formal, you can buy a smaller and nattier pack- bag, better shaped to your eye if not to your back. It will not be any better than the professional packbag of the woodsman. It is a good thing to watch the professional's outfit when you make your own. If you travel much in Canada you are apt to get 32 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT the idea that the tump line is the only way to pack. The aboriginal packs with a band passing over his forehead, and does not use shoulder straps. The most awful loads in the wilderness are carried in this way, and this is how the heavy portaging is done on all the long northern trails. The tump-strap man does not use any packbag at all. He spreads his square of canvas on the ground, arranges his loose articles on it, folds in the ends and sides of the package cover, and either fastens his tump line to the end straps of the package, or else makes up his package with the tump line passing through the middle of it. It is more trouble to make up such a pack than it is to throw everything into a packsack. The tump-line man is simply a beast of burden, and as he carries with his neck, he cannot look up or look around very much or pay any attention to the use of the rifle or camera. After all, each country has its own customs. The tump line is simply a means of getting heavy loads across the portage. It is useless in mountain country. You will find the hunters and prospectors of the Rockies making up their packages in some such fash- ion as above described, but they carry their load by means of shoulder straps, and not tump lines. Some- times they have pads of sheepskin, or felt, which are fitted on the shoulder straps to lessen the cutting. They carry heavy loads in the mountain country in 33 OUT OF DOORS that way, and could not carry them in any other way. The lines of the packbag go according to the pur- pose and the country you have in mind. Anything will do to carry flour and bacon. If you have things which you want to keep separated you need pockets. If you are going on short journeys you can carry a large bag. If you are doing mountain climbing you need a small one and one that sits tight. In general, you will bear in mind that you should carry your load well up on your shoulders and not on your hips any packer will tell you that. The European rucksack is a light and handy bag not yet in general use in this country, but worth studying. It is broad at the base and small at the top. Its mouth fastens with a puckering string, and usually it has a cover flap. It sits high and snug on the shoulders, and allows perfect freedom of the head and arms. I presume that our old friend Nessmuk, the orig- inal go-light artist in American camping matters, never saw a rucksack, but he invented a sort of pack- bag on something the same lines. Sometimes also he would just make a "turkey," as the lumberman calls it a grain sack with a string tied from one corner to the top, and thrown over the shoulder as soldiers sometimes carry their blanket rolls. You can buy a so-called Nessmuk bag today if you like. Or you 34 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT can make an excellent turkey of your own by means of a grain sack and a pair of overalls. That is the use for which overalls really were designed. Tie the waist of the overalls to the top of your pack, and a leg to each lower corner, and you have as easily carried a set of pack straps as you could ask. I have often seen this device used by hunters in British Columbia. We Americans are apt to think that we can make our own sporting equipment, and certainly we have been prolific and ingenious enough in that regard. Ordinarily we sniff at European sporting gear I have been prone to do that myself. Not long ago, how- ever, I wanted a European rucksack, a light packbag, and a Norwegian friend sent me one. It was a good deal like the duck that hatched out among the chickens. I never saw anything like it, and joined my friends in the general laughter which greeted its first ap- pearance. Yet I thought enough of this bag to try it. It made good, and now I shall use it whenever I want a packbag in the woods. It is worth a descrip- tion, for some thought has been put into its construc- tion. It is, in fact, the knapsack of the Norwegian mountain soldiers, who often have to carry loads while they are traveling on ski. It would be hard to devise a better mountain packsack than this one. In general lines this is a large rucksack, broad at 35 OUT OF DOORS the base, narrow at the top, but it is not built limp. Running from the bottom corners to the top there is a frame of brass rods roughly triangular in shape, hollow and not very heavy, but rigid. This frame keeps the pack away from the back, yet does not touch the back itself. The shoulder straps run from the lower corners to the upper corner of the frame, where there are short adjusting straps. The lower part of the triangular frame is not straight, but semi-circular, to fit above the hips. It does not, however, touch the hips at all, because a broad leather band runs from end to end of it. The weight of the pack is distributed between this broad band below, the crossed shoulder straps between the frame and the body, and the straps as they pass over the shoulders. Still an- other strap runs from the corners of the pack around the body, buckling in front. When you get this pack on you look something like a cross between a Jew peddler and a Constantinople hamal. But it is there to stay. You could roll over in it if you liked. There is an air space between the pack and the back, and the weight is beautifully distributed. It will pack from twenty-five to fifty pounds, according to the contents. So little does it distress the wearer that I find I can walk along an hour or two carrying twenty-five to thirty pounds, and hardly know the bag is there. The general theory of this bag, however, is not 36 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT its only excellence. It is a perfect trunk and hand- bag and packbag combined. Inside the body of the bag you can put your soft stuff or your heavy stuff. Between this and the back of the bag there is a deep pocket all the way from top to bottom, excellent for clean shirts or handkerchiefs, or what you like. Then you fasten the bag with a drawcord like a rucksack I run a light chain through the top of mine and fasten it with a padlock, so that I can ship it as a trunk. Over the open top there is a protecting flap which buckles down. The inside of this flap has still an- other pocket in it, excellent for toilet articles, if you like. On the front of this omnium gatherum there is a deep wide pocket, about half the entire length of the bag. You can put a sweater in that, or other soft stuff. Nor is that all. On each side of the bag from top to bottom runs a narrow pocket, also with pro- tecting flaps like all the others. You can put ammu- nition or camera films or the like in these side pockets. Lastly, underneath the bag are rigged two little straps to hold your slicker, or extra coat, or your rod case. Instead of having one big bag into which to dump everything, you have seven different receptacles, all made out of a light waterproof material, and all hung to the easiest carrying device I personally ever saw. With this kind of rucksack you can find your 37 OUT OF DOORS camera, your fishing tackle, your cleaning rod, your camp axe, your combs, brushes, towels, handkerchiefs, clean clothes, old clothes, articles of food, etc. You could dispense with a ditty bag if you liked, but the ditty bag or possible bag made of canvas or buckskin or what you like, and holding your needles and thread, buttons, fish hooks, matches, whetstone, medicine case and all your little odds and ends is something with which no real woods-goer would care to dispense. I drop my possible bag inside my rucksack. This gives me eight pockets. With this arrangement you can keep house with neatness and despatch. My Norwe- gian military rucksack lies before me now all packed for its next journey which will be this summer, to the mouth of the Mackenzie River and over the Rat Portage to the Yukon. It has in it everything that I am going to take on that trip outside my bedroll and my mosquito tent. It has in it three articles without which I should feel lost in the woods my personal idea of a good hand-axe, a graniteware wash-pan which always seemed to me cleaner than the canvas wash-pan and a certain quart cup made of black tin, with "U. S." branded on the handle. This tin cup is blackened now with many camp fires. I got it of the sutler in the Yellowstone Park in 1895, and it has been my mascot ever since. One winter ten years ago I conceived it to be an excellent thing to walk across 38 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT New Brunswick on snowshoes in the wintertime. In some way my mascot got lost from my pack in the middle of that forest country. I mourned it for months, but the next spring a trapper found it by sheerest accident, and so by devious processes it got back to me the following summer! I began to think then that it belonged to me and ought to be a part of my outfit, since it came back in this miraculous fash- ion. Any woods-goer will understand this attachment to some particular article of an outfit. The sportsman without a whim is a person not yet discovered. Some men are neater by instinct than others the others call them old maids in camp. I confess I like to know where I can put my hand on a spoon hook without feeling loosely for the barbs, where I can find a fresh roll of film or another box of cartridges or the spare match-box or the extra bar of soap. Moreover, there are little things which you want to keep handy when you are shooting or fishing a small pair of scissors, a pair of cutting pliers, not to men- tion fly hooks, leader box, reels and the like. Once we used to carry all these things in the pockets of our coats when we went angling. Lately it has become rather the correct thing for the angler or camper to have a little bag with two pockets in the flap, either waterproof canvas or pigskin, after the English fashion. When you begin to use one of these you 39 OUT OF DOORS find it very handy. In short, it is the old possible bag of the early Kentucky hunters. Sometimes they carried in it their parched corn or extra gun flints. Sometimes it was of buckskin, tucked under the belt Indian fashion. We carry it with a strap over the shoulder. There are all sorts of ideas and uses in bags. For instance, you can carry food in small round bags which nest in a larger bag. These are water-proof, and excellent for salt, sugar, tea, coffee, dried fruit or the like. Such a bag is better for back or boat. The chuck wagon on the range carried these things in a box. One beauty of the packbag, or carryall bag, is its freedom from injury in shipment. You can arrange lots for any one of many kinds of handy canvas packages, containing your bedroll or sleeping-bag, your tent, your clothing, or your nested cooking outfit, and can ship each by rail as your personal baggage. Of late there has come into use the canvas cylinder like the sailor's bag, fitted, as are most rucksacks, with a row of grommets on the top so that the bag can be shut by means of a gathering string. One of these long, round bags will hold a world of stuff. It is waterproof, and if tied tightly, will even float for a while in case of a capsize. It goes nicely into a boat or a canoe, or even into a wagon, and, if you have in 40 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT your outfit a pair of packstraps, you can put your trunk on your shoulders at the end of the wagon trail and so march off very happily. If you are camping light, two or three of these sailor bags will hold all your outfit. In one you can carry your tent in a ground cloth, in another your personal outfit and bed, in yet another the cook outfit and food. It is just as well to have a little system in your camp work. What are you going to need first when you pitch camp? Hand-axe, floor cloth and tent? Then put these things in last when you break camp, so that you can get at them first when you pitch camp. Meantime your chum is perhaps making the fire while you are laying out the tent. He wants, first, his cook outfit, the frying-pan and coffee-pot, and the little folding griddle with legs which serves as a stove. These should go in his bag last when you break camp. Your bedroll and personal duffle, being needed later in the game, can wait in the other bag until you get ready. Continually you must qualify all these matters by the factor of transportation. In a very long and hard journey you may not wish to ship your personal outfit in so perishable a case as canvas covering. I have a friend who swears by the fiber telescope cases, provided with heavy straps and locks. He has sent his sporting outfit almost all over the world in these OUT OF DOORS cases, and they have come back practically as good as new. They are not so heavy as trunks, are provided with good metal corners, and will hold an indefinite amount of stuff. You cannot, however, use one of these as a packbag at the end of the wagon trail. If you have wagon transport or even a pack train, these cases are good to take rough use. You can pack your sleeping-bag or blankets in one and the rest of your outfit in another. The two will make a good pair of side packs on a horse, and when you get back to the railroad you can check them just like trunks. A manly and workmanlike efficiency ought to char- acterize any sportsman's outfit, and for the most part he should beware of fads and fashions which come and go. It is the business of the professional out- fitter to make you think you want a lot of things, the most descriptive adjective regarding which would be "cute." You ought not, however, too much to despise the modern tendency toward lightness and compactness. The main thing is to be sincere and simple, and to beware of affectation, whether that shall mean overmodernity or a blind clinging to the past. An old-time plainsman would not listen to any talk about a bed other than a blanket and quilt roll done up in a big tarpaulin. He would point out that a thin water-proof drilling cover might get a hole 42 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT punched in it. Yet it might be pounds lighter, and hole-proof enough. Even yet sleeping-bags are made with very heavy canvas covers, and a very practical bag will run around fifteen pounds. Some like sleep- ing-bags ; I certainly do not. Yet they have the virtue of cleanliness and compactness. It is hard to get a good camp bed down as low as ten pounds' weight. One blanket is not enough for a good camp bed. It should be remembered also that writers who talk about beds of pine boughs are describing only a very limited part of this continent, all of which is open to sport- ing travel today. I am a great believer in a good bed. The nearest approach to it I have made, taking in all the compromises, is the thin mattress of deer hair, with blankets above it, the whole in a light waterproof cover of canvas or balloon silk. I even indulge my- self in a pillow a very small one of "goose hair." It is only large enough to be of service when used on top of a folded sweater or coat. When you come to the matter of beds in your outfit, you open up another wide field of practice and con- jecture. If you are in the hands of a Mombasa out- fitter, who will always send out a safari based on the English ideas of camp life, you will very likely have broad camp cots, folding canvas chairs, a folding table, also made of canvas, and a lot of other things which will take an army of darkies to carry. This 43 OUT OF DOORS is all right for those who like it. I certainly see no use for it at least in this country. Yet I recall very pleasantly a certain camp cot, and a folding canvas chair with a high back, which my father enjoyed for many years when we used to camp together. Maybe I will enjoy them sometime. After your packbag and your tent and your bed comes your campfire, or your camp stove. Elsewhere something has been said about the general idea of a camp stove inside of a tent. Don't use it unless the weather is very cold. In that case someone will have to sit up to tend fire. Most of us, however, do not camp in extreme weather during our vacations, and usually we cook over an open fire out of doors. A very practical range, familiar to everyone, is made of a pair of green logs, a few inches in diameter, laid side by side. It is not always convenient to get these logs, and they have a way of burning out and spilling the coffee. If you can get hold of a couple of steel bars to put across your logs, they will help a great deal. Any of the little griddles with folding legs will make a practical camp stove. Better have two, as one is not large enough to hold all your cooking utensils at once. One of the best camp stoves I ever used was made of an old gun barrel, plugged and sharpened like a spike so it could be driven into the ground. The 44 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT breech was also plugged, and bored to admit the ends of two or three wire hooks which would swing around as though on pivots. These steel hooks were strong enough not to melt in the fire, and they would hold a frying-pan very comfortably. Another bent bit of steel supported the coffee-pot. We would drive this spike down into the ground and build a fire around it. If a frying-pan got too hot, or if the coffee boiled over, it was easy to swing the vessel to one side on its hinge. This spike, however, was clumsy to pack. The device was more interesting than practical. Elsewhere mention has been made of the impor- tance of the camp stove in certain countries. Up in Alaska I have seen prospectors and hunters traveling with packs on their back, and they all carried a sheet iron stove such as is called a Yukon stove. In the coast country of the Alaska peninsula the only fire- wood is crooked alder of no great size. You can't do much with it without a stove, and besides it always rains up there. The man who hunts bear on Kadiak Island, for instance, must either have a Yukon stove under a canvas shelter or else he must live in a native barabbara, where he can cook down on the ground and let the smoke go out the top, tepee fashion. There are other kinds of stoves which you can invent for yourself. I have seen a very practical little stove in the tiny shanty of a fisherman on Lake Erie who was 45 OUT OF DOORS fishing through the ice. It was a baseburner using coal, and was made out of a powder can, not much more than a foot in height. Camp clothing is, of course, something to be se- lected in reference to the place where you intend to use it. For walking or mountain-climbing nothing beats knickerbockers, but they are no good in mosquito country. The usual advice is just to wear your old clothes on a camping trip, but this is not always good advice. When you are in the woods or the mountains in cold weather you are very likely wearing an inch or two more of shirts and underwear than you would at home, and very likely your trousers won't meet comfortably. I recall a friend of mine who went on a winter camp in the Rockies once with us, with the pleasant anticipation of wearing out an old pair of trousers, nicely fitted by a good tailor. When it came to putting on his flannel shirt, he had to wear it out- side of his trousers. It was picturesque in a way. This incident may be of use. The best clothes really are those made for camp life. For cold weather it is hard to beat mackinaw. Some of this is loose and shoddy. Ask for the kind of pants the iceman wears a close-woven dark mackinaw, not quite so soft and spongy as the average mackinaw coat. Get them at least two inches bigger in the waist than your street clothes. Have the legs long enough to go comfortably 46 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT into your shoe tops. Then you can stoop down or sit down comfortably, or step over a log without any knee strain. In some climates and countries you don't much need a coat if you have a good shirt and sweater, but the average man will do well to take his coat along. It is nearly always cool in the evening, and sometimes if you are riding you will feel chilled. Don't listen too attentively to the man who tells you that if you get cold either by day or by night, all you have to do is to put on your other suit of underwear. Sometimes that isn't convenient. I prefer to put on a coat. The sort of coat, like the sort of trousers, depends on the country where you are going. About the only place where you can wear a buck- skin shirt is some place in the heart of the wilderness where you are entirely alone and where it does not rain. There is nothing softer, lighter or warmer for its weight than a good Indian-made buckskin shirt no one but an Indian can make one worth while. But buckskin has strictly gone out of fashion. It is not much good for trousers, and it is hard to find a place where a shirt will not attract attention. Go simply. Dress the way the professional woodsmen do, or the outdoor people of the country where you are spending your vacation. I have a perfectly beautiful pair of buckskin riding-breeches, and I long so much to find 47 OUT OF DOORS a place some time where I can wear them. Perhaps it will never be. Everything goes well in camp and on the trail so long as it does not rain rain is far worse than snow. What shall one do if it comes on to rain? Some say, slip on the rubber poncho which goes under your bed at night. That is all very well if you have plenty of transportation. A rubber poncho is about as heavy and cold a thing as you can get. The hole in the middle lets dampness up from the ground at night. It is just big enough to get you good and wet if you wear it as a raincoat. The man who devised the poncho for the use of the cavalryman must have had some grudge against the cavalryman. If you are riding horseback the best raincoat is the cowpuncher's common slicker, but it is too bulky and heavy to con- sider for other use. The best thing I have ever found is a light, pure rubber garment gathered in with rub- ber bands at the neck and wrist, cut long and very full. This is perfect for use in the automobile or wagon, in a canoe or in a boat, or while you are working about camp. It is very light and portable also panc- tureable. Gloves are another thing which make for comfort in outdoor life. Some men like to go bare-handed, and others always wear gloves even while fishing. The best glove I have found is the officer's glove of 48 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT buckskin made for army use. The regulations now prescribe that it shall not have a gauntlet it is the private who wears gauntlets on his gloves. Old kid gloves, if large and loose, are nice to wear. You can also get sheepskin gloves with deep cuffs, with the ends of the fingers cut out, very nice for fishing in mosquito country. Up in Labrador you will find it necessary to have sleeves of drilling or the like fastened to your gloves, like a clerk's office sleeve, fitted with a band of rubber to hold them on the arm. Nor should you despise the havelock, or neck cape, which will come in serviceably if the midges are bad. Some like khaki for outdoor wear. It is useful, but not so warm as it might be. The main trouble with most trousers is that they do not give enough room in the knee and hip. Really, a well cut pair of Eng- lish riding-breeches ought to be of general all-around utility for riding or foot work. They would, how- ever, come in for the same restrictions which lie against the use of the buckskin shirt one does not want to look too "stunty." The subject of footwear in camp is an old and an endless one. In general the fashion is now against the old high-top heavy hunting-boots. If you are going on slippery rocks you will need nails, otherwise you will not need them. You can then get an easy shoe pack, without any heel, and a sole of what is called 49 OUT OF DOORS elk leather, soft and pliable, which will do you very well for walking or boat work. It is not really water- proof and it is not suitable for riding, of course, nor will you find it above reproach in mountain-climbing. Cut the tops down so that your trousers will just go into the tops of the shoe. It is the high-top boot which causes the agony of the chafed Achilles tendon at the heel. If you are troubled with that, take your tall boots off, take out your trusty hunting-knife, cut them down to street-shoe height, and go on your way happy. In the far North moccasins are worn as regular foot wear by red men, breeds and white men, but for the average American sportsman they are an affectation except when used around camp, when they are most comfortable. You can't get real moose moccasins without trouble anywhere excepting in northwest Canada, in the fur country. When you get them you can't walk in them with much comfort, if there is any gravel or other hard going. I have a pair to which I have sewed soles of soft "elk leather." They go very nicely but are, of course, rather slippery on wet rocks. In certain kinds of straightaway walking where the going is good the moccasin is comfortable footwear for a white man, but it takes an education for most to enjoy them, although nothing is better to have in your packbag when you come in tired at 50 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT night. They are good in cold, dry snow, and horribly worthless in wet weather. Good socks are hard to get in this country. They should be thick but soft and of good wool, not full of knobs and gobs. Ah, what a comfort there is in a pair of moccasins and a soft, dry pair of socks at night! Have your boots big enough for two pairs of socks, one of light, soft wool and one of heavy, soft wool. Your feet will look large, but they will feel good. Always wear a waistcoat whether you keep it but- toned or not. It is full of pockets for matches, your compass or your two compasses your eyeglasses and such odds and ends. Some men wear a wrist- watch English very generally in many parts of the world. Do so if you feel that you are obliged to, but please do not come around to my camp, especially if you have a handkerchief tucked up your sleeve at the same time. I see no reason why you should not wear your watch in camp as you do at home. If you are afraid of using it get a cheap one in a gunmetal case. Tie your watch to your person with a thong as you do your compass, your dog whistle, or perhaps your hunting-knife. Don't forget a good, big, soft silk handkerchief. It is good to keep off the sun or the cold or the mosqui- toes. Wear it sensibly, and don't tie it as though you were posing for a picture. It was made for use, not 51 OUT OF DOORS for show. In fact, that is a very good test to apply to yourself as you turn out in your camp outfit let all be for use and not for show. In one pocket of your waistcoat you will have your match-box, water-proof, of course, and in your pos- sible bag, which goes inside of your main warbag, you will have your extra box or bottle of matches. You can make a fairly good small match-box out of two brass shotgun shells, ten and twelve gauge, tele- scoping. I traded one such for another similar with a forest ranger up on the Peace River one time. The primers had started on his match-safe and let in the water. As mine was still water-proof I gave it to him, and have his today. Also I have a large-mouthed bottle of matches which has been in my camp outfit, unopened, for some twenty years, in many parts of the country and under many conditions of transportation. You can break a glass bottle, of course, but until you do, it makes a very practical match-safe. Your hunting-knife or perhaps you should rather call it your camp knife is something by which you may be judged among professionals. The fashion in knife blades, as in boot tops, is for smaller longitu- dinal dimensions. A four-inch blade is long enough to cut up anything. Such a knife with almost any kind of handle that has no guard will fit tight in a sheath. You can bore the handle, if you like, and fasten the 52 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT knife to your belt with a thong, so that it will not be lost should it slip out of its scabbard. Some like a hunting-knife with a guard Colonel Bowie did, and Davy Crockett, when they were carving Greasers and others of their friends. The argument for the guard is that it keeps your hand from slipping and getting cut while you are dressing game. It is all a matter of personal choice. I have cut up quite a few deer, bear, sheep, elk and other critters with a guardless knife, and never cut my own hand yet. Still it might happen any time. What usually happens, however, is that we don't get any deer to cut up or any merciless Indian savages to slay with our trusty blades. For that matter, however, although my hand may have lost its cunning, I am disposed to think I could take the hair of the hated redskin as well with a four-inch knife that had no guard on it as with an eight-inch spear-point with a guard three inches across. Every- one to his own taste in these matters. Another item of personal equipment is the camp axe. Personal habit comes into play here also. When hunting alone in strange country I always like to have a light axe at my belt, as well as a knife and some matches. The best handle is not straight, but has a knob on the end so that it will not slip. About a pound weight for the head is effective. The steel cannot be too good, and it should be kept sharp. Such 53 OUT OF DOORS a tool will do for camp work, but is not heavy enough for a trapper or a regular woodsman, of course. The half-axe used by the New Brunswick trappers is a mighty efficient tool. If you are going on a long trip with a wagon or a pack train it is best to have one man-size axe along. You can't do much in getting fuel for the whole night with one of the little axes, al- though it is very handy in camp or bivouac work or general tinkering. Perhaps it is partly a habit which makes a man feel so uncomfortable unless he has some such little friend along with him. Let the weight of your camp axe go into the head and not the handle. The camp axe ought not to be a toy but a tool. Some- where in your outfit there should be a file and a whet- stone carborundum is good, and keen cutting. The steel in your axe and your hunting-knife ought not to be too brittle and not too soft. When you get hold of a really good piece of steel it is apt to be by acci- dent. Cherish it, then. Your camp light is something of a problem. Usu- ally it will be your campfire. The little electric lights which work with a push button are convenient, but are apt to wear out on a long trip where you cannot renew the batteries. Candles get crushed, and kero- sene lanterns frequently are impossible. Perhaps you will have to do your best with the campfire. If you want to sit up all night you can build a fire, and if 54 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT you want to go to sleep you don't need much light to do that. For kindling wood, you will not have to go far if you are in birchbark country. If you are in a cotton wood country you can get along even if it rains the inner bark of the cottonwood will be dry. Or you can get a dry branch somewhere and whittle up a ridge of shavings on the side without detaching them at the butt. Stand this up on end against your side log, cover it with a piece of bark or your hat, and touch her off with your match. It usually will go. Keep your fishing rods and your guns dry at night by putting them under the edge of your blankets. If you have a small-bore, high-power rifle, you cannot keep it clean with water and vaseline. You should have along a bottle or a screw-top tin of one of the thin modern cutting oils. Not even this will really clean the grooves of a high-power rifle. When you get home take some high-power ammonia and moisten your cleaning rags. They will come through dirty a much longer time than you would have thought. Am- monia is hard to take into camp, although it is very useful to soothe mosquito bites. Salt and water will help the pain of mosquito bites also. Castor oil is something disliked by mosquitoes very much. Castor oil and oil of lavender combined make a very good mosquito dope. 55 OUT OF DOORS Your medicine kit is something which should be considered if you are really going into the wilderness for any sort of stay. Your outfitter will have ready for you a leather or tin case of tabloid remedies, large or small, and with full printed directions for use. Or- dinary camp diseases are only two or three in number. If you are in a foreign country such as Africa, for instance, you should be more careful with your medi- cine kit and more expert in its use. Some men take along a surgical needle or so and a pair of hemostatic forceps. In a severe cut, for instance with an axe, you can pinch up an artery which otherwise would be hard to stop. A little gauze and some clean bandages may be useful, but possibly not. It is the rarest thing in the world that anything goes wrong in camp. Usually it is time to worry about it when it happens. Men have cut off their own legs and got away with it, although that can hardly be described as a pleasant pastime. The medicine kit and the surgical appliances, however, ought to be considered if one is going very far from home in a country where there is lack of woman's nursing and a dearth of doctors' bills. Many other items will occur to other men as useful or even indispensable, and some readers will perhaps mark off the list some of the suggestions above noted. The beauty of the sportsman's catalog is that it pro- vokes discussion. There is no better reading than can 56 THE CAMPER'S OUTFIT be found in its handsomely illustrated pages. Follow- ing even in most rudimentary fashion its wide sug- gestions, you may thus transport your outfit by train, by wagon, by horse or by your own back to your chosen spot, may unpack it there from tent to bed and campfire equipment. You may walk all day with comfort or fish all day with delight. You may come into camp wet and tired and soon be dry and com- fortable and so, as good Mr. Pepys would say, to bed. Ill VACATION NUISANCES: HOW TO PREVENT THEM Ill VACATION NUISANCES: HOW TO PREVENT THEM IF there is any one cause more than another of disillusionment regarding camp life, it is the petty inconvenience inflicted by insect pests. The large discomforts we can endure, but it is the little ones which, as it were and in the vernacular, get our goat or goats. In the wilderness as in the city it is worry and not disaster that bulks most ominously. Nor does this annoyance always stop at discomfort. Disease follows the bites of some insects. Moreover, there are others which are distinctly poisonous of themselves. Once, after a bass-fishing trip in Indiana, where we hunted bait frogs around the marshes at midnight, our whole party began to feel badly soon after they returned to the city. "Malaria!" said the doctor. "Frogs!" said we with sudden recollection. "No," said he, "it was anopheles." Now anopheles is the name of a special brand of 61 OUT OF DOORS mosquito which bites you and gives you malaria it is not the mists of the marsh, but the mosquitoes, which carry malaria. All over the world there are dangerous mosquitoes. We have learned the habits and attributes of the yel- low-fever mosquito. Everybody knows that the first thing to do, in building the Panama Canal, was to kill the mosquitoes. Travelers in the tropics know the value of protection against these pests. For in- stance, there is in Ceylon a certain small mosquito, which flies only at night and perhaps is not suspected at all by the traveler, for that reason. The bite is certain to produce a bad fever. The same is true of other species in different countries. Under the microscope the mosquito is a monstrous and formidable thing. It is only under the microscope that one learns the many differences in mosquitoes, all of which look or sound alike to the naked eye or ear. You will easily learn to tell the difference be- tween anopheles and stegomyia. One species will have a harp on his back, another will have white-banded legs, another white feet, and so on. There is none of them, however, which is altogether lovable, and, poisonous or merely inconvenient, they make more combined danger and discomfort in camp than all the wild beasts of the wilderness. Nature has some kindness in her makeup, although 62 VACATION NUISANCES for the most part she is merciless. She paints some poisonous plants and poisonous fishes bright scarlet, so that we may be warned against them. She gives the rattlesnake his warning rattle, teaches us to de- test the mosquito's whining note of warning. But there are many minor pests in the woods against which she has no warning at all gnats, chigres, flies, tar- antulas, centipedes, many bugs or buglets which we realize after taking and not before. Mankind is just beginning to wage intelligent warfare on many of these. The campaign against the house-fly is now world-wide. We know now that it was the Texas tick which caused Texas fever in range cattle in the old days just as we know that it is a tick, living on ground squirrels, which causes the deadly spotted fever in human beings. It is well known that the flea is the immediate cause of the deadly Asiatic plague. Perhaps the aversion of some folk to camp life is a sort of hereditary fear of these pests and dangers of the wilderness, slight as they actually are when proper measures are taken against them. It is just as well to keep in mind a few things in the way of cure or prevention. Of course, absolute protection only can be obtained by complete destruction of the entire insect species. It is a part of the landscape gardener's duties today to wipe out all mosquitoes from low and 63 OUT OF DOORS wet places around a country residence. Malaria dis- appears as countries become settled, because the wet ground disappears, and hence, the mosquitoes disap- pear. Be clean that is the remedy of nature. When the West was young, surgery could be performed there which is impossible there today. Germs come in with human occupation. Be clean and you will be well, at home or in the wilderness. When we shall have become able to cope with the pests of the wilderness we shall acquire merit in the eye of Nature, in whose court only survival wins a smile, and failure elicits not a tear. From time to time mention has been made of insect- proof tents that are used in camp. In general it may be said once more that tents will be better when made with more windows. Especially is this true of the water-proof tents, known as silk or silkaline. Shut yourself up in one of these tents to keep out the mosquitoes and you will nearly freeze, even on a summer night, because of the condensation of mois- ture within it. A screened window, with a current of air blowing through it will really make the tent warmer, as well as safer against insects. Your tent should be fly-proof but not air-proof. A good head net is sometimes essential either by day or by night in bad fly country. When you wear it you may feel like a dog with a muzzle, but you will 64 VACATION NUISANCES soon get used to it, although you cannot well wear it on the trail in the woods. Have your head net of black, never of white or green you cannot see through anything but black. Perhaps the best net is one which is drawn in over the top of your broad-brimmed hat, and comes down free of your face, and is tied under your arms. You can even get a head net today with a hole in it for your pipe stem, if you like. Too high value cannot be placed on the long mos- quito gloves, arranged with sleeves and elastic, which are essential in some bad fly countries, such as Labra- dor, or the far North. These usually are made with the tips of the fingers cut out so that you can work. By keeping the ends of your fingers well coated with dope, your wrists and hands can thus be rendered immune against all manner of biting insects. Sometimes on the salmon waters of Quebec the lit- tle gnats or no-see-ums are so bad that the angler wears a havelock, or light linen neck cape, which is tucked down under his collar. If one smokes a pipe all the time, this will usually be sufficient protection. Much of your comfort, as regards insects, will de- pend upon your clothing. You can get a beautiful suit of olive-green khaki, or some of the light sport- ing cloths, but let it not be too thin in bad fly country the mosquitoes will go through it easily. A looser 65 OUT OF DOORS garment of wool, with thick underwear, will prove much better protection, and in general it is better to have on too much wool than too little. Light cotton underwear with thin stockings has ruined many a va- cation trip. Women especially dislike the clumsy look and feel of good sporting wear, and they are the ones that suffer most about camp they simply will not wear heavy enough stockings. Of course, you can save yourself much discomfort by pitching your camp with judgment. In fly coun- tries camp in the open and camp in the wind a mosquito cannot make any headway against the wind, because it turns his wings up sidewise, and then he is gone. If you have no other protection, try a smudge in camp, if the mosquitoes are bad. Perhaps the best one is made of cedar bark, although it is very hard on the eyes. You can get on with grass or leaves, if you can do no better. In the pine woods you may have seen the homesteaders' smudges built in an iron pot in front of the door, mostly with bark. In many parts of Canada you may see a smoldering fire with a rail fence around it. The fence is to keep the horses and cattle from crowding into the fire, driven well-nigh mad, as they sometimes are, by the swarms of mosquitoes or flies. Next to these physical protections or preventions 66 VACATION NUISANCES little remains except dope. In some countries dope is not any protection at all, so numerous and blood- thirsty are the mosquitoes. In the ordinary sporting country of the temperate zones, however, a good dope will do the trick. No one can tell you what is the best dope, for every sportsman has his own formula, but dope of some kind, in a box or a bottle, you ought to have with you, as paste or liquid, if you are going into camp in the mosquito season in the mosquito country. The standby of the woods is tar and oil. Some use sweet oil, but castor oil is more distasteful to insects nobody and nothing likes castor oil, not even a hungry mosquito. The usual formula is oil of pine tar, three parts, castor oil, two parts, and oil of penny- royal, one part. Sometimes I add to the above a bit of oil of citronella, which also is very distasteful to mosquitoes and many other insects. This dope is liquid. The smell is not unpleasant, but the prescrip- tion requires that you put it on and do not wash it off, which to some persons, especially fastidious ladies, is something of a hardship. Don't be afraid to use it, and don't get the idea that a little dab on your nose or ear is going to keep the mosquitoes away from you use plenty. If you perspire this dope will run. Usually you do perspire. All the resources of applied chemistry have been 67 OUT OF DOORS called on in the manufacture of fly dope. Some are cleaner than others and are efficient as well. You can, for instance, take castor oil and citronella, or castor oil and oil of lavender, and look a trifle more ladylike than if you use the tar compounds. Most sportsmen agree that citronella is a good repellent. There is nothing so good as quinin to cure malaria which comes from mosquito bite. From this one ingenious sportsman reasoned that mosquitoes do not like bitter things, and he concluded to put something bitter, like quassia, in a fly dope of his own. He used this dope successfully in all parts of the United States and in Central America, and claimed that it made a good protection even against chigres. This inventor was Colonel Crofton Fox, now deceased, but once a well known Michigan sportsman. His recipe, which has been printed from time to time, was as follows: Fox's Fly Dope Oil pennyroyal Oil peppermint Oil bergamot Oil cedar, F.E. Quassia, aa 31 Gum camphor, siv Vaseline, yellow, 3ii M.S. Dissolve camphor in vaseline by heat; when cold, add re- mainder. 68 VACATION NUISANCES A Western firm makes a dope something like the foregoing, with the addition of oil of cloves and cit- ronella. This is put up in collapsible tubes convenient for use. Vaseline or suet is used as a body in several of the pastes, some of which are very efficient, and all of which are cleanly and convenient to use. Most of these pastes have pennyroyal as the main repellent. There is a fly dope that has been on the market thirty years, which has quite a vogue in black-fly country. I do not know the ingredients except that oil of tar is one of them, and very likely another is pennyroyal. The mixing oil is of less importance, and we may classify this simply as one of the tar dopes. It is good against no-see-ums and black fly - these little nuisances which bite you along your hat band, or back of the ears. If you are going on a long and hard journey, the paste dope which you can carry in a box has some advantage over a liquid dope, if you carry the latter in glass. It is better to carry a liquid dope in a little screw-top tin, holding a couple of ounces or so. A gentleman in Kentucky some years ago sent me the recipe which he found very efficient in the North- ern woods merely a variant of the old staples. It calls for pure pine tar, one ounce; pennyroyal, one ounce; vaseline, three ounces. The same gentleman sometimes used another formula : tar, two ounces ; 69 OUT OF DOORS castor oil, three ounces; pennyroyal, one ounce. He always said that most of the volatile aromatic oils, or even camphor, lose efficiency through evaporation very quickly. But from his hints and foregoing ones any woods-goer can evolve a dope which will do the work as well as any dope can be expected to do. Deer flies, the big green chaps, are keen cutters. Perhaps dope keeps them away. Try it at least on the necks and flanks of your horses, for you may save them much misery. Their bite is very painful to a horse, or to a man. The bulldog flies of the Rockies are well known nuisances. Sometimes the high, grassy meadows in the mountains, which look like fine camping grounds, are almost untenable by reason of these greenhead flies. Sometimes on the prairies or near the mountains of the West you may have been tormented by swarms of flying ants, which hang around back of your head as you ride horseback or in a wagon. They bite rather keenly, and sometimes get in your hair. A head net is best for them, or a silk handkerchief if you have no head net. We have with us tonight also the tick and chigre, neither, happily, of general distribution, although sufficiently abundant. Ticks are bad things, especially in tropical countries. They make one of the menaces of hunting in Africa. Carefully fitted clothing and 70 VACATION NUISANCES leggings and footwear make the best protection against ticks. The African hunter at night always wears mosquito boots, a soft, light footwear which will turn ticks as well as mosquitoes around camp. The worst tick country of the United States is in the South; still farther to the southward, in Mexico and Central America, the tick nuisance is yet worse. There you may find the pinolillos, or the garapatos. When you come into camp covered by the latter, each with his head buried in your system, and each very much absorbed in the work he has found to do, the best thing is to get someone to touch the lighted end of a cigarette to each of the nuisances. He will then blow up, and cease to trouble. Eternal vigilance is the only price of safety in tick country. Dope is not much good. Perhaps if one were liberally anointed with kerosene it might keep them off in good measure. If you get a bug in your ear pour in kerosene, it will make him back out. Sometimes it will have the same effect on a tick. Sometimes camphor has something of the same effect, or chloroform, or ammonia. I am strong for a bottle or can of ammonia in camp. It is sovereign for the alleviation of insect bites. If a tick gets on you, don't get excited and pull off his head induce him to back out before he dies. One of the worst pests of the woods, especially in OUT OF DOORS warm country, or moist country, is the minute little red spider, called the chigre or jigger. There is noth- ing more odious in all created nature than this almost invisible pest. He lurks for you in the bark of the log where you sit down to rest, or drops on your clothing from the leaves or the grass as you walk. Nothing happens then for perhaps three or four hours. Then you experience an intolerable itching, and be- gin to swell up in bumps about as big as a hazel-nut each bump being a place where a chigre has set up housekeeping. This irritation will continue for sev- eral days and sometimes is bad enough to deprive one of all sort of happiness in camp, if one does not know how to handle the malady. It is suggested that chloroform is excellent to allay the sting of chigre bites, and sometimes kerosene has been used for the same purpose. Perhaps you may have neither of these remedies along, but you are al- most sure to have a good piece of bacon rind and that is the standard remedy of the woodsman. Rub the bites, and the places that are not yet bites, thor- oughly with this grease. You will find it alleviating and in most cases specific. Mercurial ointment no doubt would be better, but bacon rind is always handy. It will do as prevention as well as cure. Happily the chigre is not very common in a pine-wood country. You will usually find him in hard-wood country, or 72 VACATION NUISANCES in the warm and moist parts of the prairie country. No matter where found, he is not welcome. If you are afflicted by insects in camp, don't sit down and moan about it if you have not a drugstore at your command use the remedies you have. What you want is something alkaline. If you have not ammonia, use strong salt and water. Try kerosene, but not too copiously. Borolyptol is alle- viating for mosquito bites, although not always handy. That very thorough-going woodsman and woods writer, Mr. Kephart by all odds the most accurate and informing of the book writers on these topics suggests that you can kill a mosquito bite by touching it with indigo, or, if you have not indigo, then by rubbing it with a raw onion. Even whiskey used externally sometimes will take a part of the sting out of the bite. There are sand flies that walk by day, and midges that stalk abroad just at dusk. Dope will do for them. Nets do not always keep them out perfectly, but they do not fly so much by night. Some people have a great horror of snakes, and it is not much use to point out to them that the per- centage of danger is very slight indeed, and that it annually grows less, in the temperate zone at least, as the few poisonous species more and more approach extermination. The copperhead snake, once of the 73 OUT OF DOORS North, now infrequent even in the South, is or was poisonous. So is the moccasin snake of the South, mostly found around the bayous or in the wet country. The several species of the rattlesnake, very widely distributed at one time, and even yet to be found once in a while, over a great part of the United States, are very poisonous. The bite of any one of these snakes might produce death and would be certain to produce great danger and distress. Any American hunter of many years' experience will have seen one or all of these species. I have killed many of them, but never personally knew of but one case of snake- bite, and that was of a bird dog, bitten by some snake, we never knew what. The dog's head swelled up a great deal, and for some days he suffered a great deal, but did not die and eventually he recovered en- tirely. The usual remedy for snake-bite is whiskey, and then some more whiskey. Doctors say it is no good, but if you have nothing better, and are snake-bitten, it may help you forget the snake-bite, if it does not cure it. If you have courage to cut deeply into the wound at once, when the bite is inflicted, and to squeeze the poison out, you will need less whiskey. It would not do much good to cauterize the wound if the poison were under the scar. I remember read- ing an old book of boys' adventure, long since out 74 VACATION NUISANCES of print, which told of the rattlesnake bite cured by the application of the bodies of many fowls, split open along the back and applied to the wound. A sort of cupping glass can be made of a bottle, heated quite hot with hot water, and then applied, empty, with the mouth to the wound. When bitten by a poisonous snake you will want a doctor and probably cannot get one. Therefore, cut the wound all you can, and take whiskey, at least for your courage, for you certainly will be scared. If the heart begins to drop alarmingly, perhaps you will be doctor enough to use a little strychnin, if your medicine case should contain a little bottle of strych- nin in one-sixtieth-grain tablets, but be careful not to take strychnin, whiskey and rattlesnake all at once and without reservation. The real remedy for a snake-bite is permanganate of potassium. If you are in bad snake country, it is just as well to have along a few of the crystals and a hypodermic syringe for this solution you can get the outfit with instructions at any good sporting out- fitters. I never carried one in my travels, but think I should do so if I were going into a snake country for a long trip ; certainly I should do so if I were going into the tropics. In the Southwest we used to have centipedes sometimes in our boots, sometimes in our coatsleeves 75 OUT OF DOORS of a morning. They have a way of crawling into your blankets at night also. The cowpunchers al- ways said that the bite of a centipede would drive a man crazy, and that if one crawled across a man's flesh its feet were like hot needles with poison in them. The range remedy was usually a chaw of tobacco on the outside and a horn of whiskey on the inside, both repeated frequently. There are scorpions also, even pretty well to the northern edge of the Southern states, and there are tarantulas in a great part of the dry West and South- west. The bite of none of these creatures is apt to be fatal, but it is certain to be the cause of great suffering. Cut the bite open, press out the blood the best you can. Drench it with ammonia if you have it, use tobacco and whiskey if you have nothing better. Of course, if any of these poisons once gets into the blood, you simply will have to stand the suffering until nature drives it out, probably after some days of pain. I have known a man to lose half the fleshy part of his thigh from a bite supposed to be that of a scorpion. If you are timorous about any of these things, and are in a country where they may be found, carry a hair rope with you, such as the Mexicans make out of horsehair. Put this down on the ground in a loop around your bed. The cowpunchers always 76 VACATION NUISANCES said that no scorpion, tarantula or rattler would crawl over a hair rope. That may be superstition, just as the whiskey antidote may be superstition, but if either is comforting to you, why not use it, whether in prevention or in cure respectively? And perhaps also you will remember the old saying that a rattlesnake would not cross a little streak of the ashes of the black ash, if you mark that around your bed. I presume a great many rattlesnakes have not crossed either a hair rope or a streak of ashes. All these details regarding woods pests, nuisances and dangers are gruesome in the telling, but the ac- tual discomfort regarding some of them can be pre- vented or cured, and the actual danger of the others is really very inconsiderable in this country today. The mosquito is far more dangerous than the rattle- snake, the chigre more to be dreaded than the scor- pion, the tick far more than the tarantula. It is just as well, therefore, to know how to take care of yourself in camp in such way as to cure or prevent the bad effects of all these nuisances, great or small. As a matter of fact, man is the shiftiest and most resourceful of all the animals. You very soon learn the discomforts in any given camping locality, and very soon you learn to overcome them, so that you can be quite comfortable in camp, in almost any cir- cumstances. And, of course, what applies to the 77 OUT OF DOORS camp proper applies also to the summer resort or country hotel. Many a vacation has been unpleasant or unsatisfying where a little knowledge of some sim- ple things, and a little personal resourcefulness would have brought in quite a different story. IV IN THE JUNK CLOSET IV IN THE JUNK CLOSET THE most wholly delectable place in the house, as any outdoor man knows very well, is that certain apartment, room or receptacle usually by the real head of the house called "the junk closet." Here is where your true outer stores much wealth of clothing, guns, rifles, rods, fishing tackle, footwear, cooking utensils and all of the general gear which he classifies among his chiefest treasures. You have such a place yourself, without doubt. It is a place full of interest and instruction and history. For instance, when just the other day while tug- ging at a bootlace on the top shelf, you pulled down a blackened and battered kettle on your head the stew-pot which has accompanied you on many tours it might to another have seemed empty at the time, but not so to you. On the contrary, there is much that a well-educated stew-pot can preach to any man, savage or civilized, out of doors or in the home. Not long ago, fault of anything better, I went rabbit-hunting with a man who had a sort of shack 81 OUT OF DOORS out in the country where sometimes he did a little trapping or shooting or fishing, at this or that time of the year. We had walked hard and were hungry, so presently repaired to the shack aforesaid to make us up a meal. No one had been there for some days. We found a loaf of bread, very dry, and some coffee berries. Besides, we had some rabbits. It does not sound like so much of a meal. Perhaps our banquet did not cost us over six cents a plate. But, quite outside of the outdoor appetite, the point to be made is that it really was good to eat, and that with no better equipment you also may knock together some- thing good to eat. We did not have time, in our hunting, to stop to make a stew, so for the time we fell back upon that American standby, the frying-pan it is American and wasteful, just as the stew-pot is European and economical. Our rabbit was rather freshly killed, to be sure, but fresh corn-fed rabbit, when young, is good to eat. The proprietor of the shack, one of those natural outdoor men who just naturally take to doing things right in the open, proved this to the sat- isfaction of both of us. He built a fire in the cookstove and heated up abun- dance of hot lard in his frying-pan. Into this he put sections of the choicer cuts of a couple of rabbits, which in a few moments were sizzling hot and dis- 82 IN THE JUNK CLOSET posed to be golden brown of color. The point is that he did not simply fry his rabbit and then take it off, more or less tough and stringy. On the contrary, after it was well cooked, he poured some water into the fried rabbit, put on the cover of the pan and al- lowed it to steam for a few moments. This is a trick worth remembering. It made the rabbit very tender and sweet, much better than it would have been if simply fried and left more or less greasy in fact, left it tasting not a little like chicken. Our cook had poured off some of the grease be- fore putting in the water, and now he proceeded to add flour and a trifle of salt, with the effect that he fabricated a very excellent gravy for the tender rabbit, whose fragrance now arose. Meantime, he had cut some slices of the dry loaf, and placed them in a dripping-pan which he shut up in the oven. To my own intelligence this seemed indicative neither of zwieback nor toast. Our cook presently opened the oven door and sprinkled his slowly browning slices of bread over with water. "That'll make her ten- derer," said he; and so it did. The bread was very palatable and sweet, as was the rabbit. The point of which is that water and steam are of use in handling fresh rabbit or dry bread something which perhaps you yourself have not yet discovered. What with these two items and a good pot of coffee, we would 83 OUT OF DOORS not have surrendered our banquet plates for six dol- lars each, that is sure. We fell to talking of stews, regretting that we had not time to use the five-gallon oil can which offered so inviting an opportunity to build a real stew. "We'll come down here and have a big coon hunt next week," said one of the chaps, "and we'll just set that can on early in the evening, and when we come in about midnight it'll be just about ready to be good." Since we could not devise our stew at the time, it was agreed between us we should devise meantime a formula for a real stew, this to be executed in town the following day. It was so devised, formulated and executed, and here we come to direct proof of the virtues of the stew-pot proper. We called our stew a Brunswick stew, using the name of a compound as famous as it is various, which seems to have come down from the past to the great good of those who hunt or those who like game. Properly speaking, it is a game stew. As to its di- mensions, it perhaps two-thirds filled a three-gallon stew-kettle. The compounding and cooking created great excitement in a certain household for the better part of a day. We had, as it chanced, a squirrel beside abundant rabbits. More squirrels would have been better; but in a hunters' stew of this sort you have to use what 84 IN THE JUNK CLOSET you have ducks, rabbits, quail, grouse, or what has fallen to your bow and spear. Meat, such as veni- son, you can stew, but perhaps in that case you will not get so delicate and tasteful a compound as we ourselves certainly discovered. We put in all of our solitary squirrel, as well as the hind legs and saddles of about three rabbits, more or less, carefully cutting out the bloodshot por- tions, and throwing away the flanks and most of the forelegs. All of this meat was left, washed clean, while we took up the vegetable side of the problem. Into our kettle we poured the contents of one can of mock-turtle soup real green turtle would have done quite as well a can of tomatoes, one of corn, one of red kidney beans and one of green peas. We poured off most of the liquor from the peas, but added a quart of water to the contents of the kettle and then put in the meat. Meantime other departments of the enterprise were active. We had about a pound and a half of bacon salt pork would have been as good or better and this was cut criss-cross with a hunting-knife, clean through to the rind, so that it fell apart in tiny cubes not over an eighth of an inch across. Take notice that we did not dump these indiscriminately into the stew-pot. On the contrary, we fried them thoroughly in the frying-pan, and poured off most of the grease 85 OUT OF DOORS leaving only sufficient grease thoroughly to fry three large and succulent onions, which gave off a fra- grance of exceeding excellence thereupon. The con- tents of the frying-pan thereafter went into the stew- pot. Someone thought it would be fine to .put in plenty of salt, so we put in about three tablespoons- ful. It was not too much. A stew needs plenty of salt. We also tossed in a teaspoon ful of pepper, I should say. Nor was this all. The stew needed somewhat of thickening and richening. All of the ingredients we had used, meat, bacon, vegetables and all, were first class of their kind. Fresh vegetables would have- done as well, no doubt, but we did not have them. Now we took about a half or three-quarters of a pound of fine butter and about a teacupful of flour, and mixed these thoroughly on a plate. The compound resultant, whatever it may be called, next went into the stew-pot. There seemed to be nothing else we could put in at the time, but a glance happening to fall on a bottle of Worcestershire sauce which stood nearby, we put in a tablespoon ful of that for luck and it was an inspiration! Added to the abundantly spiced nature of our can of mock-turtle soup, we now had a rich and well seasoned compound, the proof of which was in the eating. 86 IN THE JUNK CLOSET It was now one-thirty of the clock. Reverently we placed our stew-kettle on top of the stove with a strong and steady fire beneath it, of heat just suffi- cient to keep it simmering steadily. Then most of us went about other business. The pot was watched from time to time during the afternoon. Sometimes it was stirred to keep the flour from sticking to the bottom. It was only with the utmost difficulty that the assistant who did the stirring could refrain from falling at once upon the contents of the kettle, so appealing had its fragrance become within the passage of two hours. At seven-thirty of the clock that same night we ate about a gallon of it. It was delicious. Take our word for it, if you make a stew precisely on the foregoing lines it will be a success. Also it will be a square meal. It will be first aid to the injured and a balanced ration all in one. Fed upon this man- ner of manna or manna of manner, as they would say in New York you shall go forth and prevail mightily in the land. As to what such a stew as this would mean to a party of tired coon hunters at mid- night's holy hour hush, man, let us not speak of sacred matters! Our camp cook, the hunter and trapper, declares himself of the intent to set up the Brunswick stew as one of the institutions of his shack, winter or sum- mer. He says that in the summertime they often 8? OUT OF DOORS catch a good many mud turtles in their nets and is of the belief in which I concur that the turtle flesh will be excellent in one of these stews. So would quail or grouse be excellent, and in camp one could add beans or rice, or such vegetables as offered. Per- haps the tin of commercial mock-turtle soup is not ethical, yet, like other unethical things, it is mighty practical there is something in the high flavoring of the tinned soup which makes the whole compound tasteful. Perhaps even a half tin of the soup would be sufficient. For most tastes, however, the seasoning mentioned above will prove very alluring. All of which matters, very naturally, come to your mind when your pet stew-pot falls off the top shelf and lands on your head in the junk closet. What is the best stew-pot for camp use? Ob- viously, the one which you happen to have. You can use an iron kettle, or a Dutch oven, or a powder keg, or a square oil can, or lard case. Or if you be lucky, you may have an aluminum kettle. Do not get the stew-pan with the long handle on the side, for you can neither cook so well with it nor handle it so well. Only remember that your fire should never be ex- treme, and that your cooking of the stew must ex- tend over several hours' time. Indeed, a good hunt- ers' stew is an imperishable and perennial thing. You can put fresh stuff into it every day and keep it going 88 IN THE JUNK CLOSET throughout the season if you like. Don't burn the stew. Take your time to it. For the eating of a stew a large tin cup is an ex- cellent receptacle, or a deep tin plate. Don't try to make your own dishes out of bark and such stuff in camp you can do it, but it is not necessary. Also you can make a fire by twirling a hard stick on a piece of board. It is much simpler to strike a match on your pants. This is a practical aid. As to that large wooden-handled fork and that long-handled spoon so often brought to mind see that they rest by your fireside. And when you are moved to fabricate a stew, take the aforesaid long- handled spoon, and bend the top of the handle over into a hook. Then it will not slip down into the ket- tle. This idea is known to a few, and is worth at least a thousand dollars to any man. Do you not remember the time in the mountains when you killed your first elk, the one you had longed for those many years? And when you came into the camp long after dark, tired and happy, leading your own saddle horse with the elk-head lashed upon it, do you not recall the fragrance which rose to your nostrils when you came into camp? into camp where the fire was making shadows all over the trees, and where the camp cook was passing quietly about get- ting things ready, since he had heard you coming? OUT OF DOORS And do you remember that in the kettle he had a stew of meat and vegetables which he put on that morning when you started out? This perhaps was the aroma which came to your senses when you leaned your rifle against the spruce-tree and loosened your belt at the close of the day. The stew and the coffee and the grilled elk ribs roasted in front of the fire even the bit of liver done in the frying-pan something of a memory, eh, what? And it all came back when the stew-kettle dropped and smote you upon the occipital portion of your cranium, nut, or coco, there in the junk closet. Nor was that all that happened. When you were putting the kettle back on the top shelf whence it had fallen, you knocked off from one of the hooks another precious possession. It was fragrant alike in memory and in fact fragrant with the smoke of the camp and the memories of the open your buckskin shirt. It all depends on what you want to do. In church or at a directors' meeting or at grand opera a buck- skin shirt is not particularly appropriate. The hunters' clubs of the great cities sometimes give buckskin din- ners for the lark of it. These big-game clubs now are active and growing institutions in some of the larger cities bodies such as the Hunters' Fraternity or the Campfire Club, or the Boone and Crockett Club of New York, the Lewis and Clark Club of Pittsburgh, 90 IN THE JUNK CLOSET the Hunters' Fraternity of Chicago, etc. Most or many of the members of these clubs will sneakingly admit the ownership of a buckskin shirt and confess inability to name a proper place to wear it in these modern days. It is the most impossible and yet the most impeccable garment of all the sportsman's trous- seau. For the simon-pure incorrigible there is no smell in the world quite so sweet as that of smoke-tanned buck- skin. It is as imperishable as attar of roses and far more sweet, the smell of the smoke which lingers with it. When the stew-kettle fell on your head, and you stopped to hang up your wholly absurd, wholly use- less buckskin shirt, you could hardly keep from press- ing it to your face and taking a deep, strong inhala- tion, if only for the sake of the pictures it evoked. In the old days of the weekly funny papers of America one of the erstwhile famous humorists wrote a story about the man with the velvet coat. It was his allegation that every man, no matter what his station in life, had at one or other stage of his career either owned or yearned to own a velvet coat. Now that I recall it I wore one myself when I was very young did not you? Therefore, as to a buck- skin shirt, of course you have one, or want one, or are going to have one. What a map of the outdoor world hangs in the OUT OF DOORS little junk closet! Here are rolls of buckskin from almost everywhere, Kootenai buck, white and fine, and Black foot bighorn, tanned, and Crow-tanned elk, and Micmac moose, and caribou from above the Arctic circle, and other moose from the Peace River coun- try what a waste of life there has been for some of us, to be sure. But who would part with any one of these rolls of buckskin, whether soft and white and odorless, or yellow-brown and rich in smoke? After a while, some time, one is going to make something out of one or other of these skins is it not true? But take buckskin just as an article, as a fabric, as a product, an industrial product. It has not only history, but exceedingly interesting history. More- over, it has utility even where it does not own the stamp of fashion. So far as I knew at the time, I was the first man of my acquaintance to have my shoemaker make me up, over a regular last, a pair of shoes built of moose hide, smoke-tanned by the Cree Indians. There was never a better pair of walk- ing-shoes made than these. Of course, they would not turn water, but, made as they were with a flexible sole, they were the softest, coolest, warmest, dandiest walking-boots I ever wore. I made a present of a similar pair to a friend in Winnipeg. They laughed at him until winter came. He did not need over- shoes. 92 IN THE JUNK CLOSET Then again, perhaps you have noticed Madame with her fine white boots to go with her pique cos- tume in the summertime boots made by her own boot- maker over a private last ? Being white, perhaps they make Madame's feet look a little bit large, but even feminine vanity will condone that in view of the ex- treme ease of wear. Her bootmaker has sold her buckskin white buckskin, made by a white man, not worth the tenth of Indian-tanned buck, yet ex- cellent even so. You can make your own buckskin if you are a regu- lar woods-rat. I cannot think of any accomplishment more utterly useless than an ability to make buckskin ; but it is the utterly useless things of life which give us nearly all the fun we get. The best teacher you can have is an Indian woman. Indeed it is much better to let the Indian woman aforesaid do all the work of making the buckskin. No white man can really pitch a lodge so it will not smoke, or make buckskin of an even and permanent softness and color. It takes an Indian woman to do either. Your Indian has no conscience, and he knows that the best buckskin is summer-killed doe. Buck leather from elk is not so good. Moose makes far better leather, especially for moccasins. If there were any antelope left, you could even use their hides. The whitest and softest buckskin for so we still must 93 OUT OF DOORS call the native product was made from the skin of the mountain bighorn. That was the skin of which the Indian women fifty years or more ago made their finest dresses, genuine works of art of much value today the sort that once were covered with the now priceless teeth of the elk. It was a marvel how white the leather was often made by these Indian artisans. Today in the far North, north of fifty-five, you may go into a dirty Indian tent and, by proper induce- ments, find at length, hid under the ragged blankets or odds and ends scattered on the floor, a bag inside of which is a snow white skin of caribou leather. That is the sort the Indian women use for the tops of their fancy moccasins. They smoke it mostly; but if they are using it for an ornamental band or flap, they leave it snow-white, embroidered with fine silks, or ornamented with beads. I don't know how they make this white tan, but very probably they do it by repeated washings and wringings and rubbings. Per- haps they use a little soap. I don't think they use any alum. In general, Indian-tanned buckskin means the yel- low-brown smoked article. Perhaps you remember Grandpa's buffalo robe. It was sort of dark color on the inside, and it was split up the middle and sewed together. That meant it was a genuine Indian-tanned robe, the best ever made. A large buffalo skin was 94 IN THE JUNK CLOSET too big for the Indian woman to handle well in tan- ning, so she split it, tanned the two halves, and then sewed them together again with sinew thread, the same sort of thread which Lizette, Loucheux woman on the Mackenzie, has used to sew her white caribou these centuries past. Laughing Water tanned her buffalo hides by the same process she used on elk or sheep. The only ingredients she used were brains, muscle and patience. Beyond a little smoke that was all. And the greatest of these was patience. Of course, the buffalo robe had the hair left on. It was stretched flat on the ground, flesh side up, and then scraped and pared and chopped thin by the Indian woman with her little bone or iron-edged hoe or scraper a tool you could never learn to use, but which in her hands did magic. She did not salt her buffalo hides and she never had seen alum that bane of good fur, often used as a ready aid in amateur tanning. She simply used patience and muscle and maybe smoke. In buckskin proper the hair must be removed, of course. If the northern Indian is making a caribou coat for warmth the hair is left on, and the hide is tanned as the old buffalo hides once were. For moc- casin or shirt leather or tobacco pouches or the like, buckskin proper had to be made. The first thing in the making was to get the hair off. 95 OUT OF DOORS The savage tanner had no vats. She knew, how- ever, some running stream or some muddy pond. Her first step in getting the hair off a hide was to bury it in the water or in the mud for three days to a week. Usually in four or five days the hair would slip readily. Then Laughing Water would take her buck hide and throw it over a log or a pole, and work- ing from the neck down, with the grain of the hair, either with her little iron hoe, or with the back of her butcher knife, which she used as a graining tool, would remove every trace of hair literally with neat- ness and dispatch. Sometimes around Chippewa camps I have found great heaps of deer hair, and it felt coarse and gritty, as though it had ashes in it. I suspect that ashes had been added to the water to effect the slipping of the hair. This was not neces- sary or typical in the Indian camp. Usually the process was to bury the hide in clean water. From this time on savage and civilized tanning lose all likeness one to the other. The white man uses tanning liquids and produces leather. Laughing Water uses nothing of the sort and she produces buckskin, which is not leather at all. There is no romance about leather you cannot grow enthusiastic over it. It is something dead. But buckskin is not some- thing dead, but something alive. All its original chemistry is there yet. All the fibers are there, only 96 IN THE JUNK CLOSET they are broken so that they are permanently softened. Laughing Water takes her buck hide now and re- verses it on the beam. Now she begins to scrape at the flesh side. This is a work of art and may be a work of genius, for some Indian women are noted for their skill in dressing hides. Here is the operation essential to the success of the Indian tan all the in- tegument must be removed, all the horny spots taken out, all the flesh removed. Working over the beam, or perhaps more often on the ground, and quite often with the hide placed in a frame, Laughing Water keeps on, patiently, skillfully, with her scraping tool of this or that shape, until the flesh surface of the hide is even and soft. She may do this in one day or in several. Perhaps the hide now has been a week in the tanning. Laughing Water is in no hurry about it. If she were tanning a bear hide, in all likelihood she would lace the hide in a pole frame and use it as she would a buffalo hide. Sometimes Laughing Water will spread the buck hide across her knees, and at risk of limb or finger, would trim at this or that spot which did not suit her. The Gros Ventres squaws were said to be the most particular hide-dressers of the Rocky Mountains. Be sure the essential application of their art was in this part of the tan, or that immediately following. The hide is now a rather ragged-looking article, but 97 OUT OF DOORS it is not parchment or rawhide. It is getting soft. Laughing Water now calls in the neighbors. They twist and pull the hide every which way, drag it around a lodge pole, throw it over a thick sinew rope and saw it up and down, do all sorts of things to break the fiber of the hide that is to say, give it its imperishable quality. It takes muscle and patience to do this. Perhaps in the far North you may have seen small spruce-trees with their trunks pecu- liarly cut into triangles, sharp-edged. Here was where the women dragged their moose hides back and forth to make them soft. The last stage but one of the Indian tan had to do with the permanent softening of the hide. Laughing Water took the skull of the deer or other animal whose hide she was tanning, split it open with her little hatchet, and took out the brains. She now rubbed a thick coating of the crushed brains not on the flesh side but the hair side of the hide, where the grain was most open. If she were tanning a large bear or buffalo hide she might have a pot of mingled brains and liver and scrapings and grease; but the real secret of the Indian tan is animal brains and nothing else. Laughing Water allows the brains to dry into the hide slowly, in a cool place she never leaves it in the sun or near the fire. After the brains have dried in, the hide is again 98 IN THE JUNK CLOSET rubbed, twisted, stretched and drawn until it is thor- oughly soft. The brains do not leave it greasy, but- pliable. They have some peculiar property all their own. This property was discovered by the American aborigine, no one knows how long ago. Laughing Water accepts no substitute. There is nothing else just as good. At any stage up to this time it has been quite pos- sible to wash the hide clean with soap and water, or with water alone, then wringing it, and stretching it and rubbing it quite dry. There cannot be too much rubbing and twisting and stretching no white man will take the pains to do it right. But Laughing Water has done it right, and she knows that nothing now remains but to smoke the hide. There were different ways used in smoking buck- skin. Sometimes a heavy hide would simply be thrown on top of the flat-roofed frame of poles, above the fire. The best buckskin was not made in this way, however. Probably Laughing Water would make a little tepee, and stretch two or three hides around the little fire in the middle of it, reversing the hides as they colored. She used what fuel she could get for this, but soft or punky wood made a better smoke. Of late years it is to be confessed that the Indian women of the reservation very often use a barrel as a smoke-house, that is to say, they 99 OUT OF DOORS knock both ends off a barrel and stretch the hide over the top end over a little fire built on the ground. This smoking is kept up carefully and evenly, and much of the beauty of the buckskin depends upon the thor- oughness of this part of the tanning. At last Laughing Water looks on the work of her hands and pronounces it good. Some day she sits down to make a buckskin shirt no white man or woman can make a buckskin shirt. She is imitative of the white, these days, so very likely she cuts out her buckskin shirt in the pattern of an old flannel shirt which she has ripped open. It opens part way down the front and fastens with buttons, very likely, the sort Laughing Water can find at the trader's store. She will also execute a little collar for the shirt, perhaps. Perhaps, also, she will make it double- breasted, like a fireman's flannel shirt in which case, if Laughing Water is a Chippewa squaw living near civilization, she will execute on the bosom the pattern in beads of a large buck with flashing eyes; where- after she will sell it to you for twenty-five dollars. The buckskin shirt proper of the old days was simply a tunic, not opening in front more than enough to allow the head to pass through. Sometimes there was a little flap which buttoned across the neck. No buckskin shirt is entitled to be called such which has not fringed seams. When the Indian woman, having IOO IN THE JUNK CLOSET rolled over her knee the threads made of the back sinews perhaps of the buck himself, began to do her wonderfully neat and accurate seam work, she let into the seam the edge of a strip of fine leather, which was cut into narrow fringes. You would not love your shirt so much if it were not for these fringes across the shoulder and down the arm seam. Why did the savage artist put them there? It was to protect the seams against wear and the weather. Perhaps some heartless civilized squaw has sold you a shirt sewed with thread. It is bogus. The fringed shirt with sinew thread is the only real article. How much is a good buckskin shirt worth? Per- haps five hundred dollars. My favorite is a Crow shirt for which I paid eight dollars twenty years ago. In museums you will see Black foot or Cheyenne war shirts of the old days which would be cheap at one or two or three hundred dollars. It was by no means the case in aboriginal life that all garments were worked down to one utilitarian pattern. There were artists, designers, persons of style, persons of quality. Perhaps the native woman who made one of these valuable old war shirts for her lord and master would be engaged on it many weeks. The strips of twisted ermine had to be made and let in. The little brass cylinders and pieces of shining metal had to be affixed. Broad bands of colored porcupine quills must be exe- 101 OUT OF DOORS cuted to adorn the front, where was to lie the phy- lactery of eagle bones, or the like. Perhaps you may read about how to tan buckskin, or how to make a buckskin shirt; but the white tailor does not live who could take two thousand dollars and make one of these old war shirts to save his life or his honor. So, you see, buckskin may have considerable history and considerable romance hidden in its smoky folds. If you can get a genuine Indian-tanned and Indian- made buckskin shirt today, made on honor by an artist, do not begrudge your twenty or twenty-five dollars. An old plainsman will tell you the warmest way to wear your buckskin shirt is inside of your trousers. The Indian did not wear his so, because he had no trousers, only leggings. His shirt was the tunic proper, and this is the type of all the plains and the Rockies. In the extreme northern country among the Chippewyans or Loucheux, the coat shirt seems to be more popular, a garment open all the way down the front. This type prevails in the Yukon country also today. I cannot say whether or not it was the ancient fashion of the garment in those latitudes. There was no native product of more barbaric and interesting splendor than the old-time war shirt of the buffalo tribes of the West. Today their glory has de- parted. They wear flannel shirts themselves, and if 102 IN THE JUNK CLOSET they sell you moccasins they are made of beef hide. The moccasins which you buy in eastern Canada on the trail as moose which are sold in most of our sporting-goods stores as moose are in nine cases out of ten made of beef hide. They are smoked, and look Indian, but they are spurious. They do not rub soft after wetting. A piece of genuine buckskin, whether in shirt or moccasin, will wet through like paper, stretch like rubber when wet, shrink like flint when left to dry, and yet rub soft as a glove if you take care of it when it is drying. My own favorite buckskin shirt has been drenched in many a snow- storm, but it is as soft today as ever. The best buckskin shirt for a white man has no ornamentation whatever beyond the fringed seam. As to museum value, beads come first and then the more modern silk embroidery of the mission girls. You can see this at all the northern fur posts clear to the Arctic Ocean. The bead work on the Yukon side of the Rockies is more profuse and rather handsomer than that on the Mackenzie side. Considered as a work of art and beauty, however, the finest buckskin shirts obtainable today come from Fort Nelson, on the Liard River. These artistic garments and they are indeed things of beauty, not merely examples of barbaric ingenuity' are made coat or jacket shaped, edged with fur down 103 OUT OF DOORS the front and at the wrists, and with one or two bands of fur, usually beaver, around the wrist or arm. Across the shoulder yoke, and down the edges of the front, and around the wrists are broad bands of the stained porcupine quills. This is the most expensive of all the Indian ornamentation, and the most beautiful as well. There are a few women at Fort Nelson who can do this quill work handsomely. There was one family at Fort Wrigley on the Mac- kenzie, I think related to the Fort Nelson workers, who also could do it beautifully. For, we must see, this is the work of artists, not many in number. I have seen such shirts sell at thirty-five to fifty dollars. The women who made them would not get five cents an hour for the time they put on them. They are beautiful garments, but rather too fine and good for human nature's daily use on the trail. They are to put on when the priest comes, or when there is a grand baptizing, or when one is a-courting. The post trader may have one, but he will not be apt to wear it very often. This porcupine quill work was used by some of the plains tribes, but they did it coarsely as com- pared with the Liard product. Apparently only the small, fine quills are used. The best dyes are the native vegetable ones. All this fancy work, however, is part of such history of the savage races as now has to do with contact 104 IN THE JUNK CLOSET of white and red life. Perhaps in your junk closet you have more than one buckskin shirt. The older they are the better. And it is your oldest one, the one with little ornamentation, the actual hunting tunic made perhaps twenty or thirty years ago the one with the imperishably fragrant smell of the smoke still lingering in it over which you hesitate as you hang it up once more in the junk closet. If you are a very sloppy man and a lot of us are sloppier than we let on perhaps you linger over it just a moment or so and look at it thoughtfully. Like many an- other thing connected with the life of the open, it was a product of evolution, the work of an artist. It has thought in it and history and romance and suggestion and education too. In short, of the entire household this is the one apartment, room or recep- tacle where precisely such things may be found. V THE WOMAN IN CAMP V THE WOMAN IN CAMP THIS chapter, if you please, will be all for the ladies, God bless them! Some women like camp life and some do not. Perhaps more would like it if more knew about it. Those who neither like it nor know about it are the ones who themselves are not liked in camp and who rarely have the second chance to break up the happiness of a camping party. It is an old story that in the woods all the bad qualities of a man or woman come to the surface, and that petulance and readiness to criticize are there found in persons who show no such disposition in conventional surroundings. It is a proverb also of the woods that it is not the old-timer but the beginner who finds fault in camp. Truth forces one to state that women do sometimes render themselves unpleasant in camp. Sometimes it is because they carry into the woods that insistence on recognition of the privileges of sex which some- times marks the American woman. No good woman ever needs or ever does unsex herself in business or 109 OUT OF DOORS in the camp, but in camp she should lay aside as much as possible her accustomed prerogatives, and do what she can to be a "thoroughbred," as men call it. The most truly thoroughbred qualities, in camp or anywhere else, are those of simplicity and sincerity and a readiness to be of use to others. Some women do not like to "mess around in camp," as they call it. They are dainty of habit, ease-loving, city-bred, so that they do not care for the open. Yet even such women have learned in time the charm of the woods, opening as it did for them a world whose pleasures they had not suspected. Yet others have taken to camping out for utilitarian reasons. After all is said, a great part of a woman's capital is her beauty, and there is no actual beauty except that of health and physical fitness. No means has yet been discovered so good as life in the open air to bring good digestion, good circulation, good lines and good looks to the average woman. It is urged by some women that camp life is not feminine, that it is not healthful, that it is not com- fortable. If these three objections were removed, many women would see portions of the world remote from the conventional routes of travel. Let us see whether any of these objections can be obviated by a little reasoning. We are beginning to use a great many sleeping- no THE WOMAN IN CAMP porches, are we not? Doctors tell us to leave our babies out all night in the open air. Apartment builders nowadays put on sun parlors and sleeping-porches for adults also. Why? Is a sleeping-porch in the city more healthful than a tent in the woods? As to the dread of exposure in camp life, it seems to take care of itself. In camp one may be wet all day and have no room in which to change one's cloth- ing, yet rarely take cold from the experience. It is in the city that one takes cold. It is when we come off the trail and change into street clothes, abandoning the warm camp clothing, that we take cold. With equally good food, equally well prepared, and with proper clothing, a woman will have better health in camp than at home. To be sure, this means some experience on her part or that of those who are her companions. It is to be supposed that she goes out only with guides or men who know how to build a campfire, pitch a tent, take care of themselves in camp or on the trail, handle horses or boats, and use all local means towards making camp a comfortable place. A woman need not engage in all the camp work, perhaps need only care for her own personal comfort, but no woman in camp ought to allow herself to be regarded as a burden. Neither need any woman in camp seek to change her natural disposition. Some women like to shoot in OUT OF DOORS big game. I myself never cared to encourage that. Many others have done so. One woman, very well known, has killed lions and elephants in Africa with her own rifle. There are many American women who have gone with their husbands, and who have killed big game in the Rockies and in Alaska. One woman last summer crossed the most northerly pass of the Rocky Mountains, but a hundred miles south of the Arctic Ocean, with her husband and his cargo of furs. There is no worse mosquito country in the world than that, yet she came through without a com- plaint, and never asked any odds in the day's work. At the end of the trip she was in perfect health. Of course, she and her husband might almost be called professional campers. Even an amateur woman camper may be as com- fortable in camp as at home, if she knows "how. She will find camp discomforts arise mostly from bad beds, bad footwear and bad clothing, so far as she per- sonally is concerned. As to bad cookery, she very often can remedy that in part herself. Of course, I speak now of simple camp life, where there are no guides and servants to do all the work the real camp in the wild country, not the cottage with the telephone and all the other discomforts of home. First of all, the camp bed should be a good one. Professional outdoor men, such as engineers, sur- 112 THE WOMAN IN CAMP veyors, naturalists, and expert travelers in the wilder- ness always have as good a bed as possible. It is only the novice who boasts of sleeping rough. Nearly al- ways you can have a good bed in camp, so that you can sleep dry and warm, and be thoroughly rested every night. You read much about beds of fragrant pine boughs, but these cannot be had by more than a fraction of the women who go camping out. One must learn to make a bed out of what there is at hand. If you have plenty of transportation, you may like an air mattress, although some do not care for them. You may make a narrow bed tick at home, and when in camp simply fill it with what you can get pine boughs, grass, hay, straw, even dried leaves. A small pillow which you can take along with you from home will not be very bulky, when squeezed down in the bedroll. Cold in camp comes from the ground, not from the air. You should always have a water-proof sheet under the bed a rubber blanket, a tarpaulin, or a canvas floor cloth. Make your bed on top of this, and if the ground is very damp, spread the water- proof on top of plenty of boughs or hay. The floor cloth or tarpaulin will serve to keep your blankets dry when they are rolled up and in transit. This canvas should either be separate, or else large OUT OF DOORS enough to go both under you and over you, like the cowpuncher's "tarpie." Some like sleeping-bags, al- though I do not, and prefer a blanket bed which can be opened and aired out daily. The blankets should always be kept clean in their canvas and covered up so that they cannot be walked on in the daytime. The best blankets are none too good in camp. Do not let them cut down your bed to a weight much below twenty pounds, including the tarpaulin. If you have one of the down quilts which hunters sometimes use on account of their lightness, your bed can run as low as fifteen pounds in weight. But by all means see that it is a good one, that it is dry and warm, and soft enough so that you can sleep in comfort. Of course, I am supposing that you are sleeping in a good tent well pitched, and that, if the door cannot be left open, there are plenty of windows in the tent for ven- tilation. Of course, a woman can sleep without a tent on the ground just like a man, with the canvas cover under and over her blankets to keep off the wind and dew, or even rain. This is not, however, a desirable way of living except in times of emergency. Let me therefore repeat for women some of the simple and fundamental suggestions already offered for men. To my mind, insect pests are more to be dreaded in camp than almost anything else. There are ways, 114 THE WOMAN IN CAMP however, of guarding against mosquitoes and flies. In the daytime you can wear a head net and gauntlet gloves. Be sure to have the head net of black bob- binet. You cannot see through white or green mos- quito bar. Your gauntlets should be of soft cloth, to fasten above the wrists with rubber cords. The wide gauntlet of the leather glove will sometimes let in mosquitoes. You may try all kinds of mosquito dope. Almost any good one will drive away mosquitoes for a little time, but not for long. Moreover, the head net does not remove the buzz, even if it prevents the bite of the mosquito. You will have to get used to dope and gloves and head nets, however, in some localities and at some seasons in camp. In the early spring and in the fall you will not be bothered. It is at night that one suffers most from mosqui- toes if one does not know how to keep them out. It is perfectly simple to do this if you have the right sort of tent. The best tent has a floor sewed to the bottom of it, so that no insect can crawl in under the edges. In this case it ought to have plenty of windows, covered with bobbinet, to permit ventilation. It may have either a full, loose net across the front, or a complete inner tent of netting, to drop down all around. Another very good way is to have an in- dividual mosquito bar made about six feet long and three feet wide, with canvas top, with four-foot walls OUT OF DOORS of bobbinet. You can put this up inside the tent or outside, and drop it around your bed, tucking the edges in under the blankets. It is a sure shot against mosquitoes. So also is the mosquito tent used by Alaskan hunters. It has the floor and both ends sewed in, with only a round hole in front, through which you crawl, passing through a sort of sleeve, which is shut with a drawstring after you are inside. Of course, after you get in under your mosquito bar, whichever form it has, you will have to kill the mos- quitoes which came in with you. After that you will not have any more trouble. In fact, getting rid of the mosquito nuisance is much like other discomforts in camp it is not difficult when you know how. Another thing which brings discomfort to women in camp is unsuitable clothing. Men wear heavy woolen clothing, flannel shirts, two pairs of woolen stockings, and easy boots when they camp out. Women don't like to make their feet look big, and sometimes are afraid their costumes are not going to be becom- ing. Now there is just one answer to the question of proper camp clothing, and that is wool and plenty of it. Few women wear heavy enough stockings in camp, for instance. Therefore they find themselves bitten by mosquitoes, or they suffer from cold feet. Good stockings and a sweater are essentials. Good shoes also are necessary for the woman in 116 THE WOMAN IN CAMP camp. Here is where a woman does not always get a fair chance. Her husband will buy himself all kinds of good hunting boots, and perhaps let his wife content herself just with a pair of her old street shoes, which are light and perhaps leaky, and which cer- tainly are not going to be large enough to allow an extra pair of heavy wool stockings. The expert woman camper looks out for her feet before leaving home. She does not necessarily cumber herself with heavy, high boots of water-proof leather; but there are many light boots made for women's wear, some with soft soles and no heels and wide laces. It is just as well to look at some of these things for your- self before you start into camp. Be sure to get your boots large enough, and then fill them up with stock- ings. A pair of ordinary shoes with ordinary rubbers are useful to have in camp in damp weather. You should never stand around in camp with wet or damp or cold feet after you have finished your day's work. If you have nothing better, use the rubber-soled tennis shoes. The best way, as soon as you know you can keep your feet dry, in the evening, is to take off the shoes you have been wearing and put on a pair of moccasins. The best, if you can get them, are those made of genuine moose leather by Indian women, but you cannot often get these in the trade, no matter 117 OUT OF DOORS what they call them in the catalog. Have your hus- band bring you a pair or so the next time he goes into the real wilderness country. A pair of soft moccasins is next to the sweater in camp. Put them on over a pair of dry stockings at night, and all at once you cease to be tired, but are warm and comfortable. Then you can sit by the fire for a while and be per- fectly happy. Some women cannot walk well in moccasins at first, but when you are used to them, moccasins are very comfortable even on the trail. A piece of belt leather, from an old mill belt, makes a fine sole for a moccasin. No city woman ought to try to walk in an unsoled moccasin in any country where there is gravel or sharp roots or snags. Women do not dress as heavily as men, even in camp, but they should be careful to go provided with abundance of warm clothing. If the weather is to be cold at all, take besides your sweater, a mackinaw coat such as men wear there is no better garment for the woods, and you can get it in rather becoming shapes and colors, if you like. You can find flannel or khaki shirt-waists or jackets if you like, or you can take your own. You can get along with one skirt, if you have to. It may be of denim, khaki or bed- ford cord. Wool collects burrs. Do not use corduroy, for it is very heavy when wet and is very slow to dry. 118 THE WOMAN IN CAMP In making ready for the camp, talk with sensible men who know about camping. Then use your own judgment, and do not let a sporting-goods clerk do your outfitting for you. You will not really need very much extra clothing or outfit. Usually your own old clothes will prove serviceable in camp. Much de- pends upon the nature of the trip which you are under- taking. Adjust your clothing to the time and place where it is to be used. Avoid freakishness or coquetry in camp dress. Be simple and sincere and useful, and do not spend too much time in wondering how you look. Spend some of that time in watching how the stew is coming on, or how the bean-pot is progressing. You cannot take trunks or valises into camp, but you will find that a packbag is a very useful and con- venient vehicle for all sorts of articles. A good plan is to get an old one of your husband's, and sew it full of pockets, inside and out. Then distribute your little belongings, combs and brushes, mirror and other toilet articles, in one pocket, your night robe in another, your handkerchiefs in another, and your extra stock- ings, etc., in still another. Have everything where you can find it in the dark, if need be, and keep each article in the place appointed for it. When you get in camp, you can hang up in the tent a little "house- wife" of your own make or you can buy one already made. You can also buy a little case of simple medi- 119 OUT OF DOORS cines, if you like, although you probably will not need them, beyond one or two simples. You can even buy for fifty cents a little ready-made case containing scissors, needle, thread, buttons, safety-pins and the like. It will be very useful in camp, and as it costs so little, it may be as well to purchase one as to take the articles from your own work-table at home. Sunburn is one of the discomforts of camp for a woman in the summertime. For herself or her chil- dren an excellent and prompt remedy will be found in carron oil, which is only linseed oil and lime-water. It takes the sting out almost at once. There are cer- tain creams, in tubes, which you can find offered in the sporting-goods stores, and one or two of these are good for sunburn, or chapped hands. Always pro- tect your hands in camp by gloves, especially when cooking. Otherwise it will be very difficult for you to keep them sightly. If you are going far out into the mountains away from all settlements, have your teeth well cared for before you start. Do not take any chances with tooth- ache in camp. In all trips into far-off countries men take a pair of forceps in their camp chest. The best way is not to have any need for the forceps in camp. As to food, that depends entirely upon the locality where you are going. Probably you will have game and fish in camp. You will have flour just as you 120 THE WOMAN IN CAMP do at home. Whole-wheat flour is better than white. A little corn-meal is good to have along also. You may have to mix the bread in the dish-pan or on a piece of oilcloth, or even in the top of the flour-sack. If you have a camp oven you can cook quite good biscuits or loaf bread. The usual camp bread is the bannock baked in the frying-pan before the fire an art not learned the first time you try it. Men do not like to experiment with too many bright ideas in camp, so don't be fussy about your cooking, but learn to use the accepted methods. Learn to cook bread in a frying-pan, and to bake all sorts of things in the Dutch oven. But, for your own satisfaction, have along one of the folding camp reflector ovens, and have also a good broiler. You will very soon learn how to use these things around the campfire, and learn to hang a kettle or pot over the fire in such way that it will not fall down. Broil your fish and game whenever you can, but remember that takes a little time when you are in a hurry. The stew-pot, or pot an feu, is an excellent thing in camp. Even when you are traveling, you can take along the stew-pot, not quite exhausted at the last meal. Put in game, vegetables, rice, potatoes, whatever you have, and add a little water as it boils down it will always taste good in camp. If you wish to walk into the heart of all the men about the camp, 121 OUT OF DOORS don't put on fresh ribbons but make a fresh camp dish once in a while. Some men cook well in camp, but usually their menu is limited, and a woman can beat them at that game. There is a very keen delight in camp cookery for the woman who has once learned how. The great secret of comfort in such cooking is not to have too big a fire. A blazing campfire is the commonest fault of the woman tenderfoot as well as the man tenderfoot. Let the fire blaze after you have finished cooking. If you can make good batter cakes in camp, you are sure of a second invitation, for few men can do that. Have along a little syrup in a tight can. Butter can be bought now in round boxes, of two pounds each. It is shipped in this way all over the world and can be taken into camp quite fresh. You need not take fancy groceries into camp, such as olives, pre- serves, etc. Probably you will want condensed milk or cream. You must have the staples such as beans and flour and bacon. Get the best bacon you can for breakfast, but have along some, perhaps a cheaper brand, which will render grease enough, for grease is useful in the camp cooking. Don't throw the grease away if it is clean, but save it in a little tin in a cool place. Camp near a spring whenever you can, and camp where there is good ventilation, not in low ground too close to your spring. 122 THE WOMAN IN CAMP Probably the men will think they know more about fixing up the campfire and the camp than you do. Study the business of camping for a time, but always keep your eyes open for little wrinkles adding to your own comfort. See that your own bed is made as you want it, and that your mosquito bar is going to be practical, and that your personal belongings are left where you can get at them. Always look after your own bedroll and packbag when you are moving camp. If the campmaster does not know enough to district certain duties to each individual, then quietly secure that desideratum on your own motion. A good sys- tem in camp keeps everything moving swiftly and smoothly, so that there is plenty of time left for the enjoyment of the day, whatever that may be walk- ing, fishing, riding, reading, sewing, loafing or sleep- ing. Sleep all you can in camp. It is the most health- ful thing you can do. When you are not sleeping, keep in the sunshine, for that also is healthy. Don't fret and don't worry, but just let go and rest. There is something indescribably fascinating about a well arranged camp at night when the fire is blazing and the members of the party have gathered about it to tell the stories of the day. Honeymoons have been spent in camp. In camp with your husband or brother you may find quite a different man from the hurried and worried individual you knew in the city. One 123 OUT OF DOORS thing is sure, it is possible for a woman to be perfectly comfortable in camp, and perfectly happy as well, pro- vided that she has the proper company and the proper knowledge of the life. I have spoken thus far rather of the actual and business-like camp such as men like to make on hunt- ing and fishing trips. There are plenty of other sorts of camping somewhat less strenuous. In a canoe camp, close to civilization, I have seen a dozen lively girls making merry around a common campfire night after night. This was in a permanent sort of camp, with many city conveniences. Even in such a camp, however, a proper knowledge about clothing, outfit, cooking, etc., is of use to a woman; and a wise thing in camp to remember is that although the conventions have been left behind the proprieties have not been. If I had to give only one word of advice to the woman going into camp, I would say, "Smile." That is not a bad word anywhere, but it is best in camp, where so many things may be annoying. It is not anyone's fault if it rains or if things go wrong. Smile at it. This is a very nervous day and age. Surely women as well as men may be overstrung, anxious, worried. It is worry which is today wrecking so many nervous systems and making city life often so wretched. Some- times a couple of weeks 'in the woods may give a 124 THE WOMAN IN CAMP tired or worried woman a new viewpoint for life. Mere freedom from noise may mean very much to some women. For the woman of broken-down nerves the doctor will prescribe complete rest and silence. You do not know that you hear the noises of the city, but they are there all the time. Sometimes when you get to camp you will want to sleep almost all the time for two or three days. That shows how tired you were, although you did not know it Try the camp cure. There is no better way to build up your efficiency. What is more, there is no better way of having a good time, when you know how. The best way to learn how is to try it simply and sincerely, not wholly intent on having all the good times your- self, but trying to be a thoroughbred, as very probably the leader of your camping party would call it. A brief experience of the right kind of camp life, the sort that is carried on with practical good sense, will be enough to show you that a woman can camp out with perfect comfort and happiness, and with the best kind of results for herself. VI UNCLE SAM'S SHOES VI UNCLE SAM'S SHOES WHAT is the best walking-shoe in the wide world? You can read fifty attempted an- swers to that question in the show win- dows of sporting-goods houses, each of which will carry a dozen different models of sportsman's boots of all sorts and descriptions as to height, weight, shape and material. Most of these boots will run much heavier than the daily footwear of the average city man. They run to wide soles, heavy nails, high tops, bellows tongues, coarse laces, heavy leather. In short, if the ingenuity of our ablest inventors were put to work it could not devise any sort of footwear more un- suitable for the actual walking purposes of the average man than is the average sportsman's boot, so called. It has always seemed a curious thing to me that our shrewd commercial men never have discovered this fact and taken a departure into a more rational sort of footwear for sportsmen. Uncle Sam has realized the importance of good, rational shoes for walking men. So much has he done 129 OUT OF DOORS so, that he has established an army shoe board, com- posed of experts, whose purpose it has been to produce the best infantry shoe in the whole wide world. A look at this shoe itself, or at the published handbook of the board done by Major E. L. Munson will quickly convince you that Uncle Sam did not go to the sporting-goods stores when he devised his infantry shoe. Upon the contrary, he has produced a shoe very similar to that outlined from time to time in recommendations by this and a very few other writers who have insisted that the best walking-shoe for sports- men was the regular street shoe, and not a new pair of heavy boots. All military men know that a walking man is no better than his feet. The records of some wars show that at times as many as thirty thousand men have been put out of business by blistered feet. In the average army twenty-five per cent, of the walking troops have trouble from bad feet, much of which is traceable to bad boots. The average private soldier is not mentally fit to buy himself a pair of shoes. This seems a singular statement, but it is based on the in- vestigations of the army board above mentioned. A battalion of infantry was selected for vivisection pur- poses, each man being allowed to pick the sort of shoes he wanted. They were marched eight miles one day and eight miles back the next. Thirty-eight per cent. 130 UNCLE SAM'S SHOES of them had bad feet. Then Uncle Sam got into the game and devised a shoe of his own. He put the men of eight companies of infantry through nine days' marching, one hundred and twenty miles all told, and the men all came back able to go on. Less than fifty per cent, showed the slightest degree of foot trouble, and none were incapacitated, although the march was made under full equipment, about seventy pounds in all. From these facts it is not difficult to argue that the average sportsman is no more fit to buy shoes for himself than is the average soldier. Whence these words of wisdom, all of which are based upon the report of Major Munson, and not upon any personal preference or experience. It is believed by army men that Uncle Sam now has the best infantry shoe in the world. If so, why might not sportsmen or outdoor men take a hint from Uncle Sam? For the purpose of extending as widely as possible the missionary work of comfortable feet it may be advisable to mention some of the specifications which Uncle Sam finds to be comfortable in his walking-shoe. Perhaps the reader may remember the old army shoe, with a straight sole and no boxing in the toe. That shoe has been in the discard long ago. The model today has a soft box toe, or tip, and a "wauken- phast" or curved sole. As to the material, it is of medium-weight leather, OUT OF DOORS vegetable-tanned, and not oil-tanned. That is to say, it is diametrically opposed to the heavy grain leather, oil-soaked shoes, which were native to Canada, but which are manufactured by several dealers in this country for sportsmen's wear. Oil leather sweats the feet, and grain leather is too heavy for Uncle Sam. Also, extreme weight in the shoe is something not tolerated. It is an easy thing to figure out that the weight of the shoe is lifted many thousand times every day, so that a few ounces eventually may mean a few tons. A walking man needs shoe enough and not too much shoe. Obviously Uncle Sam has arrived upon the great truth that the best boot for a soldier or a sportsman need not be, and ought not to be, water- proof. Major Munson specifically states that the leather should be porous enough to allow perspiration to escape, even though that means the lack of water- proof quality. If from continued wetting the shoe seems hard, when dried, it is softened with neatsfoot oil, or just with water applied inside and out. Uncle Sam knows another great truth it does not hurt a man to have his feet wet when walking. It is better to dampen a light shoe and let it set to your foot than it is to try to pack around a heavy raw-hide, grain- leather, oil-soaked affair which never by any means in the world can adjust itself to the shape of your foot 132 UNCLE SAM'S SHOES The heel of the boot is broad and long enough to go well forward under the ball of the foot. Inside the counter it must not be so loose as to allow the foot to work up and down. The sole should lie straight, for Uncle Sam has discovered another inter- esting fact, which is quite opposite to the notion of the swell boot-maker. The latter insists that in these days the arch of everybody's foot is breaking down, so he needs a special last which will support the foot. Uncle Sam, upon the contrary, does not support the foot under the instep, but lets the foot do its own sup- porting which is the only comfortable way of going shod. There is no worse agony than trying to walk with something sticking up under the middle of your instep. The way to make a foot natural and strong is to give it plenty of room and then to use it. If you find your feet are carrying too much weight, diet a little, or take more exercise but don't try to cure them by sticking arches up under the instep. This is what Uncle Sam concludes. The sole of the army shoe is not any thick, double- sewed, wide-edged affair. It is a single piece of leather, flexible, but tough. It is cut long enough and wide enough especially across the ball of the foot to give a foot a chance. There is a toe-cap to keep the leather from the toes, and in it there is plenty of room for the toes to lie flat. The shoe allows the great 133 OUT OF DOORS toe to He out perfectly straight and easy as any great toe should on a good walking foot. The shoes should not be loose and shifting, but fair and snug when laced. Yet another thing the tongue which Uncle Sam puts in his shoe. Your sportsman's boot-maker very probably will have in a bellows tongue of rather heavy leather running clear to the top of the boot to "water-proof" it. Uncle Sam makes the tongue of his model shoe of rather light leather, and it is fast- ened only at the lower end. This shoe can be taken off and put on readily, adjusted readily, and what is just as important, dried out readily. It is of no con- sequence that a man gets his feet wet when he is walking. It is of consequence, however, that he should be able to dry out his shoes when he has stopped walking. In the average sportsman's boot you will find coarse thongs for laces, and sometimes hooks to expedite the matter of lacing up the boot. Uncle Sam will have nothing of this. He thinks that hooks are too easily bent. He uses rather large eyelets and broad, flat shoe-laces, not made of coarse thongs. In short, he has a pretty good type of comfortable street shoe for his infantry model. It need hardly be said that he allows no seams or heavy folds of leather over the tendons of the ankle. He protects the back of the 134 UNCLE SAM'S SHOES ankle and the front of the foot by the model of his shoe. Encouraging the man by making it obligatory on him to get his shoes large enough, Uncle Sam gives him footwear which can be adjusted by the wearer himself within a certain working latitude. Another peculiarity of many sporting boots is their heavy armor of hobnails. There have not been lack- ing army shoes which also were weighted down with hobnails. The German marching boot of old type was such a boot. Perhaps you have seen pictures of the extra shoes French infantrymen carry on their knap- sacks today. They also have soles covered with heavy hobnails. None of them for Uncle Sam! He knows that too many hobnails make the shoe cold and more- over uncomfortable underfoot. In our army shoe there are a reasonable amount of small hobnails, of soft iron, never of steel. The true function of the hobnail is not to protect the sole of a shoe, but to give it a good footing on the surface over which the wearer is walking. You don't need a perfect mass of nails to insure that desideratum. Uncle Sam knows that though you give the man the best shoe in the world he can not keep his feet in good condition without a little care of the feet themselves. The army sock fits the foot, and is neither too large nor too small. It must not wrinkle, and it must never be darned or mended these things are taboo. A pair 135 OUT OF DOORS of socks is thought good for about seventy-five miles. As a matter of fact it is difficult in this country to get real wool socks for out-of-door work at any price. I remember that the other day I was obliged to pay a dollar and twenty-five cents for half hose in order to be sure they had wool in them. Nearly all the hosiery sold in this country is two-thirds or three- fourths cotton. What is sold as wool rarely, if ever, is fifty per cent. wool. As Uncle Sam's private soldier is not a wealthy man, his socks usually are about half wool and half cotton; but they must fit him or he gets into trouble with his officers. His officer also will insist after a march that the feet be washed in cold water. Perhaps you may have thought that it was a good thing to put salt in the water. Uncle Sam does not think so he will not even let his soldiers grease their feet with pork-rind unless the salt has been soaked out of it. He has invented a powder for his private soldiers to use for their tired feet eighty-seven parts talcum, ten parts starch, and three parts salicylic acid. Pure oil can be used on the feet, but soap is to be avoided, as the alkali is bad for the skin of the foot and makes it blister more easily. Care of the feet daily and care of the socks also which must be washed and dried are a part of the rational policy which Uncle Sam lays down for his walking men. 136 UNCLE SAM'S SHOES When a private soldier wants to get a pair of shoes he is not allowed to purchase that pair which may make his feet look prettiest. Not one, but both of his feet are carefully measured, and the length of the sole must be at least two-thirds of an inch longer than the greatest length of the naked foot with the weight borne on it. Uncle Sam knows what perhaps a few sportsmen may vaguely have discovered the foot stretches both in length and in breadth after a day's march, especially under any heavy weight. Some feet may stretch half an inch in length in a day. Uncle Sam discovers that the high-arched, long and narrow foot stretches the most; the short and well-knitted foot the least. Hence the sensible qualities of plenty of length and width, plenty of room for good stock- ings, and plenty of latitude in the adjustment of shoes to the foot at different times of the day. There is no man who ever traveled under pack who will not approve of all these conclusions arrived upon by Uncle Sam in his story of footwear. The army board does not go in much for oiling the shoe of the foot soldier. A little neat's-foot oil used to soften the leather, and not to water-proof it, is about the limit. The soldier is encouraged to stand in water for about five minutes when he first puts on his new shoes, and then to start off on a brisk walk of some miles over level ground. This 137 OUT OF DOORS sets the shoe to the foot. Once set, it should be kept of that shape. If the sergeant find a rooky put- ting his wet boots under his head for a pillow, or letting the boxing get smashed down by something during the night, he will chide the novice and show him that his shoes should be left all the time foot- shape, as nearly as possible. If they pinch a little when put on in the morning, wet them, and then start to walking in them. At night never dry the shoes close to the fire. Many a sportsman will recall a pair of wet boots ruined in this way, especially if he soaked them with oil. The private soldier is taught to take his medicine of damp feet during the day, and then to get his feet warm at night by means of the cold bath and the rub and the dry pair of stockings. The sports- man may take lessons from the soldier. . Uncle Sam has discovered something else which a few of us older birds in the outdoor game have run across, to wit, the all-round usefulness of the little roll of "Z. O." or zinc oxid adhesive tape. There is not any other one thing more useful in the kit of an outdoor man. Uncle Sam specifically teaches his in- fantry men how to use this in case of a blistered foot. The top of the blister is never removed, but is flat- tened, after the liquid has been pricked out, by the application of the adhesive tape. The adhesive tape is warmed a little bit, and then slapped down over the 138 UNCLE SAM'S SHOES blister. This takes off the friction of the boot. I presume many sportsmen have relieved a chafed heel by sticking on a postage stamp in fault of anything better. If, therefore, you desire to have comfortable feet when you are walking afield, consider the ways of Uncle Sam and be wise. Get your shoes big enough for plenty of socks, and get them light enough so that you can carry them. Don't lug around a lot of leather which is of no possible use to you. Don't punish your feet any more than you need to they will get theirs before the day is over if you are a middle-aged man and packing twenty pounds of use- less flesh, as well as as much more of gun and am- munition. It makes no difference how wet your feet are in the daytime, if they are dry at night. But if you blister your feet and bruise them and tire them all out by lugging around a lot of cowhide which you don't need, and if you scarcely can sleep by reason of the fatigue in the muscles of your legs and ankles, then blame yourself, and not Uncle Sam nor the writer of these words of wisdom taken from Uncle Sam's pronouncements more or less directly. There is no charge whatever for this advice to the intelligent maker of real walking wear who cares to put out a sporting shoe which will sell itself after it once is used. It is first-hand advice, too the writer of it is 139 OUT OF DOORS just back from the Sierras, where he climbed Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States, along with other pedestrianism, and all this was done with perfect comfort and in the U. S. army shoe. It is the easiest shoe I ever walked in. VII MOUNTAIN CAMPING VII MOUNTAIN CAMPING A PECULIAR phase of life in Europe seems to be that it is all in doors. I do not recall ever to have seen any sort of tent or en- campment in all Europe except such as are used for military purposes. The camp in the wilderness seems unknown there. Hotels, inns, cottages abound and you can be very comfortable in the remotest regions obtainable; but of camp life, as we understand it on this continent, there seems to be none at all. Take other countries as they come. East Africa is a good outdoor region and more is the pity that it is so far away and so expensive. The game regions of the far North of this country, on the Mackenzie, the Yukon, are impossibly inaccessible, impossibly uncom- fortable as well. The upper Rockies, say, of British Columbia, hold one of the best regions that we have, but travel there is a matter of time and expense, and, moreover, it is not a pleasant mountain country, for the timber is very heavy, the climate is damp, and there is much devil's club. Even our own Alaska, abounding as it does in big game, is not comfortable OUT OF DOORS camping country, so far as the western coast is con- cerned, because of the continuous rains. It is true that in all these countries named, there is an extensive and interesting outdoor life, but it is not the most pleasant phase of outdoor life that is possible. The best man's country that ever lay out of doors still lies there that along the great double backbone of the United States, the Rockies and the Sierras. Take the foothills and mountains of Montana, Wyom- ing, Colorado, New Mexico, as well as of the more western ranges bounded by Washington, Oregon, Cali- fornia, and you have the cream of all the world for the outdoor man. True, the big game is not so abun- dant there as was once the case, but the angling is better than ever, and the mountains are there, the sky is there, the water is there, and the wind and the trees. Camp life in the upper regions of this man's country is in the belief of the most experienced about the summit of human happiness. Mountain camping is something entirely apart from the creed of the lower levels. The base of supplies is left far behind. Transportation is practical, but not too abundant. The main charm of it is its absolute independence, the feeling that you have cut loose from civilization with its comforts and all its compli- cations, and that at last you have gone into a country sacred to the hermit, the hunter, the prospec- 144 MOUNTAIN CAMPING tor, the recluse, the trapper or just the loafer like yourself. There are just two ways of getting back up into the high country. You must go on foot or on horse- back. That venerable naturalist, Mr. John Muir, of California, traveled all over the Sierras on foot and alone. He did not even carry a blanket and for food he took little excepting a sack of bread which some- times got rather stale before he had eaten it all. Berries and the like helped him out. He was hardy enough to stand that sort of thing. For you it would be a mere boast and a large discomfort to undertake anything of the sort. It is true there is considerable foot travel in some of the mountain national parks where the grades are easy and the trails perfectly plain. There are also hiking parties of young and enthusias- tic persons who manage to cover considerable dis- tances through the mountains, carrying their impedi- menta on their own backs. For the average man this is not a practical and pleasant way of going into the mountains it is hard enough even at the lower levels. Avoid the crime of insincerity or pose in your pleasures. The alternative transportation is that of the saddle horse and the pack train. This is really the pleasant- est sort of an outdoor trip that a healthy and hearty man can make. It leaves all of the delights of our 145 OUT OF DOORS Eastern, Northern or Middle Western country entirely eclipsed. A horse and saddle and the diamond hitch there lies the answer to your questionings, if you have Welch rarebit mares, dyspepsia or hard luck of any kind. It is customary for anyone undertaking to describe mountain travel to waste valuable space in trying to explain the diamond hitch that essential of all mountain travel. No man ever read a description of the diamond hitch, even illustrated by the most in- genious pictures, who ever got any clean-cut idea out of the reading. It is entirely different on paper from what it is on the wall-eyed cayuse with a bull-dog fly biting him in a tender place. The place to learn the diamond hitch is in the mountains with your packer who has practiced it all his life without the aid of any printed page. By virtue of the diamond hitch, and a few horses, the most astonishing things can be done by way of mountain transport. Pianos, cook stoves, victrolas, sideboards, melodeons, or anything else, can be taken into the mountains, if you like. Perhaps your guide, if he be one of the advertising outfitters, will en- courage you to take a lot of stuff. You will pay three dollars a day for a pack horse in some of the parks, two dollars a day in some of the others. One dollar a day is about the average rental of a western cayuse for packing purposes. Your outfitter has them to 146 MOUNTAIN CAMPING rent. Too big a train, too heavy a camp outfit simply anchors you and wastes your time ; on the other hand, too meager a lay-out may leave you handicapped by discomfort. The average pack-train trip in the moun- tains costs about fifteen dollars a day per head for a party of one, two or three. It all depends on the length of your trip and its purpose. A delightful trip in the mountains can be made by two and even three good partners who don't take more than one pack horse between them. Sometimes hardy young men will walk and drive along a single pack horse or perhaps two and carry their belongings. A saddle horse and a pack horse behind is, as they used to say in Texas, thousands. A consultation with your outfitter will regulate these matters. The more work you do, the less your expense. Your pack train once provided, you will find that it affords a very wide range for practical outfitting. It is a man's proposition. As practised by the real men in the real West, it cuts out all the dinky stuff with which modern sportsmanship has a tendency to over- load itself. The go-light outfit is viewed with cold disfavor by the real old-time pack master. He wants man's size stuff along. His cooking outfit will be made of steel, iron, agateware, tin something which will stand the grief of use and travel. He is apt to have a couple of kettles, a good coffee-pot, and a tea- 147 OUT OF DOORS pot. These will have riveted spouts and each will have a handle or bail. You can get all these things in aluminum or other ware, but better leave that to your guide. He will have stuff which is time-tried. Sheet- iron is not bad stuff for camp ware. I have in my possession a sheet-iron coffee-pot, riveted, with not a bit of solder about it, which made a trip to the Rockies in the days before the war. My father gave it to me and I find it will still make excellent coffee and not come apart on the fire. Experience on your own part will teach you to leave most of the light stuff at home and to come to like the practical, simple out- fit of the real old-timer. For instance, I presume you could get quite a good sum of money if you could devise a really practical, detachable handle for a fry- ing-pan. There are all sorts of these things adver- tised. Of course, you know that the handle on a frying-pan sticking out the way it does makes it a very awkward thing to transport. Follow an old prospector or a packer into the hills and you will find that his frying-pan does not have any handle, but nests down handsomely. Also you will find somewhere in his hip pocket or his saddle pocket he will have a big pair of pliers, useful for many things around camp, whether in pulling nails, shoeing the horse, or cutting wire. It is the easiest thing in the world to take the frying-pan off a fire just by means of this old-time 148 MOUNTAIN CAMPING pair of pliers. Try it and you will agree that there is no need at all for any patent handle to a frying-pan. There is no charge for this advice, and you may patent it if you like. Your tent in the mountains may be large and com- fortable, for the back of a pack horse is pretty broad. If you are going to move continuously, the A tent is as practicable as anything you can take. If you are to have a permanent base camp, perhaps it is just as well to take along a good, practical wall tent. You can get a big one, fourteen by sixteen feet, made in light paraffined fabric, which will not be very bulky nor heavy. If you want to take a tent for your own private use, as many men do, it can be the single pole variety. In general, however, stick to the time-tried and not the fanciful things in outfit. You can get many tents of the "dude" order with which you can do many different things. Leave them at home in the front yard for the boys to play with. I have a friend who delights in showing me his new six-shooter which he can take all apart in two or three movements of the wrist. He never can understand why I do not admire his gun. It is because I once lived in a country where everyone considered his frontier six- shooter part of his clothes. I never saw one taken apart, nor one that needed to be taken apart. It is the same way with all the items of your mountain 149 OUT OF DOORS outfit. Let the dinky stuff and the dude stuff stay back home and be guided by the experience of your old-time pack master, who will not lead you astray. As to your bed, let us have one more whack at the sleeping-bag that accursed invention of a misguided soul. Leave your sleeping-bag at home, in the Adiron- dacks or in the Minnesota woods. Take a pair of good wool blankets which will weigh not less than ten pounds more weight is better. Don't despise a good wool comforter or a "katy" which will fold double and make a nice mattress under you. And whatever you do, don't fail to have for your own use a good, big bed "tarp" as it is known in the West. On the stock ranches we always used to have the tarpaulin of twenty-ounce duck, about seven feet by fourteen, and sometimes it had harness hooks on it, .some- times not. It surely would turn rain. For the pack travel of today you will not need canvas of quite so much weight. But canvas and wool in abundance you surely should have for your bed. No hunting trip is a success when you don't sleep well and dry at night. Canvas and wool together are the correct dope for the mountains. Take an air mattress if you insist, or if your dealer does. Don't blame me if you sleep cold. Very probably your outfitter or guide is lazy it is only human to be lazy. Therefore, before you start on the trip, see that his axe is a man's-size axe and 150 MOUNTAIN CAMPING that it is really sharp, and that there is a file in camp to keep it sharp. It is very well that there should be in the party one or two additional axes, hand axes of at least a pound weight. The dinky sort that go in your pocket ought to be left at home with that patent tent in the front yard for the children. You can get a good, practical little hand-axe with a knob on the handle, a claw to pull nails, and some real steel in the blade. This will be a little heavy to carry on your belt unless you are out for a hunt by yourself and may get caught out over night. It will, however, go well on your saddle horn. Keep your own axe to yourself in your own tent, and don't lend it, nor let it lie around. Keep it sharp. One or two of these little affairs will help a great deal in camp work. They cannot, however, take the place of a real axe in certain phases of camp life and of mountain travel. A folding pocket-knife with good-sized blade sup- plants the long-blade hunting-knife which most of us like to wear in the wilderness. This will do for your culinary list except that you should see that there is a spoon and fork in the grub box for you. You want your own box of matches in your vest pocket with your compass. On your saddle is your rifle scabbard as well as your camera, which latter goes at the side of the horn. At the cantle you tie your coat and slicker. Don't OUT OF DOORS forget a good, loose wool coat, for the nights in the mountains are cold ; and I don't know but that you might get a good warm waistcoat. You will be none too warm. There should be a good sweater some- where in your outfit. Also there should be a half dozen pairs of heavy, wool stockings. You can wear one or two pairs of these over a light and soft pair of stockings so that your feet will not be chafed. A very useful form of footwear for almost any sort of wilderness travel is a leather-top, rubber- footed shoe with corrugated sole. You can get them with heels also if you like. Until worn down they hold well on the rocks. It is always more or less damp around camp, even in the mountains, from dew or the like. If you have on a couple of pairs of heavy stockings and this water-proof boot or moccasin, you can be comfortable in the evening or in the morning when you go out to hunt the horses which naturally are al- ways lost. A light pair of real moccasins supplements this style of footwear very nicely for wear in camp when on dry ground. The very high boots are best left at home in the front yard ; but a good substantial pair of calfskin boots with hobnails you ought to have. You cannot ride in the rubber-sole shoes. The hobnails make riding a trifle more dangerous, as they hang to the stirrups; but as most of your horseman- ship will be simply sitting on top of a horse as it plods 152 MOUNTAIN CAMPING disspiritedly along, you probably can use hobnail shoes or boots in the day's work in the saddle, as well as on foot. Don't have your boots too heavy or too new. Read the chapter on Uncle Sam's shoes. Your guide or outfitter will usually attend to the grub list. Be sure he has read very little in expert counsel on emergency rations and the like. He is very apt to start out with a sack of potatoes and onions and shows mighty good judgment in doing so. The usual tendency in camp food is not to have enough bulk and coarseness in the diet. If you are going very far and cannot carry much bulk, you can use the desiccated onions or potatoes. Your guide is very apt not to put in practice many theories about going light when it comes to grub, for he figures that he has a human appetite and that you have or are going to have. The bacon of the West is apt to be pretty salty and somewhat different from that which Friend Wife gives you at breakfast at home. Still it is greasy and it will make a meal before you find any partridges or venison or trout. Bacon is inde- structible and indispensable and time-tried. Accept no oily substitutes in cans, for you surely will regret it. Bacon is legal tender, man's size, and C. O. D. Take plenty of bacon, and then a little more. Take also a sack of flour, and a quarter of a sack of corn-meal, and an eighth of a sack of rice. Rice 153 OUT OF DOORS carries a lot of food value and the average tenderfoot can use it more profitably than beans. You can make puddings out of rice if you find any berries or if you care to use some dried fruit, apricots or the like, with it. Also rice goes well in the stew-kettle to which you add squirrel, partridge, venison, bread, bacon, anything on which you can lay your hands. Some- times the stew-kettle, still half full, will travel along on top of the pack horse from day to day. It is better than to use too much fried food. Salt is one of the heaviest things in the pack train, but you must have it if you are on a big game hunt. It takes about five pounds of salt safely to cure the average scalp of a big game head. In the moist country of Alaska we always used to figure that for a big bear hide we would need about fifty pounds of salt to save it. You and your guide can figure out about how much you will need. If you run short of salt, perhaps you can save a scalp by careful fleshing and drying in the open air. Even pepper will tend to pre- serve it and protect it against flies. Tinned milk, and, indeed, most canned goods, are better left at home. They are very bulky, because they have a lot of moisture in them. Tinned butter is the only thing of that sort I would much care to have in my own camp outfit. Canned goods you do not need. Your rice, your corn-meal, and your sack 154 MOUNTAIN CAMPING of dried prunes or dried apricots will do the trick for you far more practically. Sugar you ought to have along, as well as tea and coffee. You can make syrup out of brown sugar and mountain water. Don't carry the water in with you on horseback, because it is al- ready there. There are a thousand other things which you can take if you like, but very probably your guide's imagination will stop working about this stage of the game. Of course, if you have plenty of horses, you can pack in all the heavy and bulky luxuries you like. The tendency is that way today. I have seen grapefruit, cantaloupes and fresh eggs in the heart of the Sierras. Choosing your guide or rather call him your com- panion, for the word "guide" is a misnomer, anyhow is the most important problem of your trip into the mountains if you be not yourself a regular mountain man. In general, take the companion who is recom- mended by some friend, or the man whom you have seen yourself. Don't pick out a guide who wears buckskin, or very high-heeled boots, or very large spurs, or a very wide hat, or a very fancy hat band. Go in for the chap who wears any sort of hat, who is very much sunburned, rather lean and hard looking, who probably doesn't wear spurs at all when you see him, and who is dressed in pants and overalls and any sort of shoes. Better get a rather oldish man, 155 OUT OF DOORS one who doesn't talk very much at first, and who has that sort of look around his eyes which you know when you see it. I like them to have rather blue or gray eyes, but this doesn't bar many a good man of other colored optics. Per contra, if your guide is choosing you, what do you think he would rather find in you? Would he pick you out of a crowd if you were dressed to the limit of the would-be westernism high hat, high boots, long knife, six-shooter, and all that sort of thing? Would he choose you naturally if you were turned out in ultra dude outfit, accordion panties, silk shirt and all that sort of thing? I trow not. You are looking for a human being in your guide. He is looking for the same thing in you. He wants you to be his friend and companion as well as his employer and he wants you to be a human being with no frills. Once more, avoid the crime of insincerity. Don't pretend to be what you are not. Simplicity and sin- cerity are two great points in good breeding and good conduct Choosing your horse is another matter which may some time come to you and not to your Western counselor. If so, don't pick out the fat, slick horse with no marks on his back. Select a cayuse of rather rugged architecture, of course not too straight up and down and with hoofs not entirely too large. Be 156 MOUNTAIN CAMPING sure that he has some old saddle marks on his back. That means that he has been ridden. Don't indulge in any bursts of confidence in Western horses. For the first few days, casually insist that your guide or the cook or somebody else top off your mount for you in the morning before you mount, especially if the morning be frosty or rainy. There is no crime in confessing inexperience with mean horses. In hand- ling a Western horse, take him by the cheek piece of the bridle and turn him around a few times if you have any suspicions about him. Mount with your back to the horse's face, the stirrup turned square around to meet your left foot. Don't take hold of the cantle of the saddle. That is tenderfootism. Just grasp the horn with your right hand. Then as you spring up you do not have to cross your arm with your leg as you get into place. If you perform in this way you may fool your horse into thinking that you are his boss, which is all he wants to know. Generally, however, any regular outfitter for the mountains is careful about his saddle stock and he does not wish to play any tricks with his employer. Most of your saddle work, as has been said, will not be wildly galloping in the breeze, but simply plodding along, hour after hour, in rather rough country, at a slow walk. Your rifle, of course, goes under your leg when OUT OF DOORS you are in the saddle. If you can take only one rifle along, let it be a twenty-two it will mean more meat in camp. Your fly rod should go with you and it should be a good one. A very practical form of fly rod is made with a detachable, short handle, which is not easily broken and which will go in a bag or valise. The middle piece and tips can be carried in a steel tube with a screw cap. This will stand the grief of the biting lash rope. Your fly book need not be bulky nor too numerously stocked. Some bucktails, some professors, some coachmans, these will do the work for you in wild streams. Have them pretty large, or part of them so at least, for often you will strike trout of four or five pounds in some of the bolder waters. There is only one saddle worth thinking of for the mountains and that is the cow saddle. If you can afford one of your own, all the better. Have it made to fit you like a suit of clothes, and then stick with it. As to the pack saddles, you will see all sorts of pack saddles and saddle rigs recommended. Stick to the time tried sawbuck, which very probably would be the choice of your guide if he is an old-timer. Very probably he will have kayaks or panniers for packing. It takes time to roll up a series of packs made out of the camp outfit every morning and to get these into place. Kayaks of rawhide or canvas simplify matters very much and are more apt to stay put when you 158 MOUNTAIN CAMPING hang them on the saddle. I once saw a very good set of panniers made out of willow champagne cases. They come a little high these days if you buy them with the intent of first exhausting their fluid con- tents. Pack train travel itself is something different from any other form of human activity. Unless a train has worked together for some time and is used to going away from home, some of the horses will need watch- ing to keep them from turning back to their old pastures, hobbles or no hobbles. Then, again, there is always a pack horse which does not want to go along with the rest and which has to be herded all the time to keep him in line. If you can, get a train made up of animals which have worked together. There is a curious sort of attachment between horses which have lived together. They have the most acute dislike for being left alone. Take some decrepit, old, wall-eyed cayuse, which will scarcely even groan un- der the rope's end and which bears every mark of early dissolution, and watch him when the other members of the train disappear around the shoulder of the hill he will raise his head, extend his ears, and emit the most heartbreaking wail of protest. Then he will scamper off on a fast trot until he gets in sight of his friends again. Horses do have strong friendships of this sort and they are very gregarious in their nature. I was 159 OUT OF DOORS once coursing deer down in the old Indian Nations in the old times, and a friend and I rode a pair of "States" horses which we had taken down there as harness horses. If one of these got out of sight of the other, he would immediately begin to neigh in the most impassioned fashion, and more than once this unusual appeal would start our game or spoil some plan of the hunt. We felt like killing both of them before we got done. Of course, also, you will feel like mur- dering every pack horse in a train before you get done with them. Your guide will be more philosophical, for he has been there before. You can crowd quite a lot of stuff on top of the cayuse if you insist. If you keep your packs down to one hundred and twenty-five pounds or less, and if you travel five hours a day or less, you will get along comfortably and steadily, and not have any of your stock knocked out, always provided your out- fitter knows how to pack the least bit on earth. Don't try to take too much and don't try to go too far. Take it easy. Don't crowd the ball. The one great delight of the mountain trip is that you have cut loose from all sorts of worries. Forget all about the day when you must meet the railroad. Remember that you have left the telephone and the daily newspaper far behind you. Don't crowd your horses and don't crowd yourself. Take it easy. If 1 60 MOUNTAIN CAMPING you can do this, I presume you will find your camp- ing trip in the mountains one of the pleasantest of all possible human experiences. This country of ours is so big that no one-tenth of it knows how the other nine-tenths live. The curse of American life in general is that of strain and hurry and the ambition to make all the money there is or get all the so-called success there is. Most of these gods of ours are clay in the feet and a good deal higher up. We do not get enough out of human life as we go along. Perhaps the best human life ever lived in America was that of Colonial days in the South. The nearest approach to that which we have now is the life on the Pacific coast. There are only two places in the United States where men and women know how to live at all. One is in the South and the other is on the Coast In California, Oregon and Washington the visitor will find phases of life altogether unknown in the East or the Middle West. A most pronounced feature of this is the tendency to get out of doors a tendency, of course, made possible by the climate of that coun- try. We do not in the least know how to live east of the Alleghenies or in the Mississippi Valley or on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. But on the Coast they are beginning to get something out of life as they go along. In that part of America you will see more 161 OUT OF DOORS camping, especially camping in the high places, than you will anywhere else in our domain. By this I mean not so much the professional camp- ing out or the big-game hunter or the mountain climber as that of the amateur and of the family party. The automobile has changed the social life of all of our country and nowhere so much as on the Pacific slope. It is used as a practical means of transporta- tion in the mountains. You will see countless motor camping parties all through the Sierras and Cascades at elevations of six thousand, seven thousand, eight thousand feet above the sea. Naturally they are con- fined to the mountain roads which have been built. It is to be hoped that our government will extend more and more its series of roads through the Sierras and Rockies, for they certainly open up a new world of delight for the use of Americans. The boundaries of the world have been moved out enormously by the invention of the gasoline engine. Thus, I once saw a family party of campers in the pine woods near the Grand Canon of Arizona. They had come all the way from Los Angeles across the desert, and brought everything with them that they needed their tents, beds, cooking outfit and grub box, all lying about here and there about their sturdy motor car. When I saw them, they were in camp, a half dozen in all ; they had come in a couple of cars. And 162 MOUNTAIN CAMPING of the party there were two or three of the brownest, healthiest, heartiest young girls you ever saw in the world. They did not seem to have a care on earth. They were happy and wholly in tune with their life. The horizons of their life were broader than those of twenty years ago. They had found something of the comfort of the hills. In the course of travel through the Sierras or the Cascades or the Rockies you will today find many sucH automobile camps. Sometimes a solitary individual will take his light and cheap, but wholly practical, car into the mountains all by himself. He will have room for a dog, a tent, a bed, and abundant grub. He may stop where he likes for a day or a week at some spot where the water is good and the view is grand. You will see him with his tent extended back from the side or rear of his car, making a part of his temporary house out of the car itself. For a half dozen such camps in the high places, you will find a half dozen ingenious schemes for utilizing actual means at hand human ingenuity employed in human enjoyment. This new and increasing use of the delights of higfi mountain scenery is one of the pleasantest phases of American life. The five-passenger car at a low price is the most efficient enemy the insane asylum ever had in all the world. It gives an outlet for the man who doesn't want to use a pack train, but is contented to do 163 OUT OF DOORS with something a little less than a big-game hunt and to remain a little outside of the most penetralia of the wilderness. Thus you may choose quite a range of enjoyment in the wonderful mountain country of the West. In- deed, you could use the same means of enjoyment in any one of scores of places along the Alleghenies or the Appalachians in the East. Fishing, climbing, loaf- ing, or traveling there is nothing better than this sort of thing high up in the hills, in places where you can see the ragged line of the white mountains lying on ahead of you, where the trees have grown small and crooked around you, but where the sky has taken on a strange, new blue, where the grub has taken on a strange, new taste, and where your heart has learned a strange, new charitableness toward all mankind. You could not call that kind of trip a failure, even if you did not kill very much game. VIII YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT VIII YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT NO doubt the first boat was a log, seeing which pass by upon the waters some soapless soul perhaps hailed with the exclamation, "It floats !" It may have taken yet more prehistoric time to discover that the bark of a log will float as well as the body thereof, is easier to carry between streams, or to propel on any water. These things happened before our time. We white men found the Indian bark canoe in a model long unchanged, and have but slightly improved upon it except in the way of ma- terials. Imitating the canoe itself, we have to some extent imitated the customs which came down with it. The Indian was poor and had not much equipment. He could take his boat and its needful contents on his back and start across country very comfortably. Such has ever been the aim and ambition of the white ca- noeist in his day. Your true canoeist takes himself seriously, even al- though he recognizes himself as an imitator of savage man. But both the canoe and the canoeist are worth 167 OUT OF DOORS taking seriously. There is no more beautiful form of sport, none more clean than canoeing, and if you look over the personnel of any branch of sport shoot- ing, fishing, racing, boxing, golfing, all amateur ath- letics you will find no body of men to surpass the canoeists of this country. With few exceptions, they are men of good standards in life, in business and in sport. We have had canoeists ever since our leisure days began, but today there are more canoes per capita than ever before. The sport grows not only as to its organized form in the parent American Canoe Association and its allied divisions, but also in its un- arfiliated and individual phase. The central body of all the organized canoeists is of course the American Canoe Association, whose great summer meets on the St. Lawrence or the Great Lakes are very famous affairs. The Western Division of the A. C. A. also has at times held important meets, local cruises, annual camps, etc., not to mention the regular summer busi- ness meeting and the annual midwinter banquet. In this way canoeists are brought together for many years, and there are members now meeting in one or other of these associated divisions who first met as canoeists thirty years ago, and who have grown old in the sport together. Naturally the summer meetings in the big permanent camps are largely 1 68 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT racing meets, for amateur prizes in a number of events, paddling, sailing, etc. Among the men who go in for this sort of thing, however, are many who now and then take a solitary cruise of their own in the wilderness or elsewhere, and an increasing num- ber of men go in for this form of the sport who care little for identification with any organization. These are the closest imitators of the solitary Indian and his ways. Besides being the cleanest, the most beautiful and the most spectacular of all our sports, canoeing is one of the most economical, even if you belong to a canoe association. You can get a good canoeing outfit for about what a good golf outfit will cost you, and there are no club dues to pay, unless a trifle of a dollar a year association membership be called such. You can purchase a good canoe today either in the cedar or cedar and canvas type for thirty to sixty dollars. Even if you go in for extras cane-seated stools and lazybacks for the ladies, a carrying yoke, an extra cushion or so you cannot very well spend much money on your boat. That is to say, if you purpose being a devotee to the cruising canoe. Of course, if you want one of the beautiful racing craft, built not for comfort but for speed, you can spend more money. That is but one branch of canoeing the racing side of the sport but even that is purely amateur. Very 169 OUT OF DOORS bold and skillful are some of these amateur sailor- men who race these little flyers, built decked fore and aft, with a self-bailing cockpit, rigged mainsail and mizzen, and sailed with a hiking board which allows the skipper to lean entirely outside his boat, balancing as artfully as any bicyclist, his weight against the thrust of the wind, and his eye against the variations thereof. Such a boat is no place for a man who cannot swim. Fifty such men in fifty such boats make a merry sight of a pleasant summer day. It is ama- teur work, absolutely on the square. There is no pro- fessionalism thus far in American canoeing. The most expert canoeman has no place to go if he wants to cash in his amateur knowledge. Not for him is any of the muck of the so-called Olympian games, and not for him the commercialism which governs certain of our American pastimes of the more popu- lar sort. But the bone and sinew of the sport of canoeing is your solitary man who goes out alone or with one companion into the wilderness and takes care of him- self as the Indian used to do, priding himself on the lightness and compactness of his outfit. How light can the canoeman's outfit be? There was one old woodsman, more or less famous in his time, who re- duced his outfit to twenty-two pounds in weight that is to say, his canoe and all its contents weighed 170 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT twenty-two pounds. A builder made for him several of these extremely light canoes, one as low as nine pounds. I saw one of them which I could lift out at arm's length on one finger I think it weighed about eleven pounds. In this craft he managed to get about quite a bit up in the Adirondacks, carrying what suf- ficed him for a camp outfit. This is a little bit like painting the lily, but at least it will show the possibili- ties of going light. After all, that sort of thing may be called faddish. No one knows how many men and boys were drowned in imitation of this old extremist. It is far more sensible to encourage man's-size equipment. Any team of horses will run away and any canoe will upset, and no canoe is safe. To be practical and rational is always a good thing in sport. To make the canoe outfit light, practical and safe has been the study of many good business men who have had offered to them the ideas of many amateurs. There is a mental as well as physical stimulus in this fascinating form of recreation, and you will hardly meet any canoeist, or go to any canoe camp, without learning of some new wrinkle which some canoeist has discovered. The canoe also has its social side. Around the city of Boston there are many hundreds of canoes in use in the summer season, and the craft has become very popular of late in almost all the large cities where OUT OF DOORS there is any safe canoeing water. In many of the busy Western cities, where for a generation business men have thought it criminal to engage in any sort of sport, you may now of a summer evening see many and many a tired business man taking his wife or his sweetheart or his children out paddling on some lake or stream, and having a quieter time of it than the occupants of the chugging power boats which repre- sent the ambition of others who are in a hurry and who love noise. You can go in for a good deal of ele- gance in such a personal craft as the city man's canoe line it with tapestry carpets and silk cushions, have seats of cane and lazybacks of polished woods. But all the time the model of the canoe will be that which has been practically stereotyped for a long time, the model of the woods. The white man's canoe, how- ever, has one great advantage over the red man's it is always dry and clean, and so lends itself to deco- ration, even of the feminine sort. A rowboat is clumsy and sloppy, but a well-handled canoe is clean as a parlor chair. Of course the big association meets, or summer cruising meets of less size, are the real clearing-houses for canoe information. In any such camp you will find many interesting devices showing the personal love men have for this clean form of sport. In these cruises or traveling meets where camp is broken every 172 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT day or so, the usual thing is for two men to go in one canoe, and to divide the camp outfit. A fourteen- or sixteen- foot canoe not to mention the fine craft which are made up to eighteen feet will carry two men and a perfectly comfortable camp outfit. Men have used cruising canoes on long trips, camp- ing at night without any tent, and sleeping in the canoe itself with only a shelter over the cockpit. You will see the cruiser of today usually carrying along a tent, a practical yet very light affair, usually of so- called silk or silkaline which is really Egyptian cot- ton of bulk scarce larger than a pocket handkerchief, and a total weight of only four or five pounds. There are divers curious and ingenious forms of these light tents. They may be had with shallow walls, in the A model, the single-pole circular or miner's model, or in the open-front camp model, with a screen over the door. Most often the canoe man does not carry tent poles, but uses a ridge pole made of a light rope, which he stretches between two trees or over two crotched poles which he cuts in the woods. The old- timer laughs at the man who carries metal tent pegs, but your dandy canoeist will be very apt to pull out a dainty bag with a lot of short, pointed wire pine with a ring at the ends, like a surveyor's pin. They hold well enough to keep down the edges of the tent in ordinary weather. Of course the ropes on such a 173 OUT OF DOORS tent are not really ropes at all, but light, strong cords. The tent itself, however, will turn wind and weather very well. Sometimes the tent will have the floor sewn into it. If not, the canoeist will have a light, water-proof floor cloth of some kind on which to make his bed. If the cruise is in the wilderness, he will have some sort of defenses against mosquitoes, either a bobbinet net- ting inside the tent, or a door to the tent itself. All his equipment, however, will be light. He will not carry a big roll of blankets and comforters like a cowpuncher, nor a tarpaulin of twenty-ounce duck, like the cowpuncher. In short, the canoeist's tent, floor cloth, blankets, clothing and grub outfit all to- gether will not bulk so large and will not weigh much more than the cowpuncher's bedroll which he throws into the cook wagon. In the fixed association camps there will be a regu- lar street of tents, all pretty much alike, often of a big marquee model, tall enough for one to stand in, with plenty of arrangements for clothes hangers and the like, room for a cot, and arrangements for all sorts of little artificial camp comforts. This is the effete side of the sport. The canoeist makes amends foi 1 that by the severity of his costume. A sleeveless jer- sey, a pair of duck trousers, and rubber-soled sneak- ers are en regie on cruise, or about camp, even at 174 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT mixed soirees, although there are occasions when blue coats and visored caps come into use. The man on cruise depends on a sweater or an old coat for his evening costume. All his clothes must be of the sort to go into a bag, for the trunk or valise is taboo. These sailor bags are usually slim, round affairs, water-proof, and capable of being tied in such way that they will not take water even in case of a capsize. Your canoeman still experiments with blankets. They must be light and no larger than needful. Bulk is almost as bad as weight in his game. The cot is not quite the thing on cruise, and the bed must go into a bag. A pillow, of course, is hardly allowable in a tent occupied by really rugged canoeists. There are the round dunnage bags into which one can put a pair of boots, a sweater, an extra shirt, or even a little grass or straw. There is one thing to be remarked about all canoe- ing its cleanliness. Etiquette, ethics and custom make this mandatory upon every man in the camp, or even upon the lone man in the wilderness. This is the one standard of conduct to be neat and to be clean. In a canoe camp you are apt to see each chap make him a little broom of twigs. The floor and front of his tent will be swept clean. There is an unwritten law against throwing rubbish in the company street 175 OUT OF DOORS or assembly grounds. Very often there will be a camp police appointed to care for the careless. If you look inside a real canoeist's tent you will find everything absolutely in apple-pie order. On the side of the tent you will see a little "housewife," in which he keeps his combs, brushes, needles, threads, and other little articles not stored in his war bag. Loose odds and ends of food or equipment are not good form. The camp mess, or the individual messes, are usually storage places for the receptacles carrying grub, and every tent is made to keep all as neat as possible. Above all, hospitality reigns in a canoe camp, whether of many men or of two or of one. This, too, seems to have come down from Indian times. It is a pleasant virtue, and your canoeman practices it finely. What he has in camp is yours so long as it lasts. If you are in trouble of any kind with your boat or equipment, a dozen are ready to help you. There is a fine comradery in the sport. Your com- panion in shooting and fishing may be eager to beat you. Your companion in golf may be sour or morose or profane at his bad form. Your comrade in a ca- noe camp is loafing and inviting his soul, and the only competition he cares for is to make you have a better time than he is having himself. In such a camp as one of these traveling canoe 176 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT meets you can learn very much about the canoe and its outfit. All the standard models of the best mod- ern canoes will be represented, and you have oppor- tunity to see the best efforts of the outfitters in pro- ducing things practical yet portable. Of course the outfitters sell to canoeists many things not really use- ful. Nearly always you will find one or more tents which will offer you soup made out of tablets, coffee prepared from lozenges, or desiccated vegetables which do not taste like anything in particular. These things lose something of their charm when there is a farm within half a mile where one can get milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, or fowls. Usually the division ca- noe cruises are made in settled countries. Canoe cookery may or may not be good, for many men have many skills in cooking out of doors. The cancer's outfit is usually simple, and he does not carry many days' stores unless he is leaving the settlements altogether. Bacon he must have in spite of those who insist that olive oil is better for frying. Fish or game he may have as opportunity offers; if not that, then plain beefsteak bought of the village shop, or chicken lawfully or unlawfully obtained. If he car- ries potatoes there will not be many of them. You are apt to find his flour or his meal in little water- proof bags, well tied and put in another water-proof bag. His sugar and his tea will be similarly cared 177 OUT OF DOORS for, no package being very large or very heavy. Rice, sometimes oatmeal, not infrequently beans, will be found in these light stores ; but the wish of the canoe- ist is to forage on the country as much as possible, and in most canoe cruises villages are not far apart. The best camp cooks rely on the stew-kettle as well as the frying-pan. Fried fish, fried ham and eggs are not to be sneezed at, but neither is the stew cooked slowly, made out of bits of meat, some vegetables, a dumpling or so, or even some crusts of bread. Squir- rels go well in such an enterprise, or even a young rabbit. Of course, in a game country where one can get fish or grouse there is no cookery and no food better than that which you will find in a well-con- ducted camp of experienced canoeists. Many of these men can make good camp bread or biscuits. Those who cannot, depend upon the loaves of bread they can find here or there in the country or in the village. Even butter you may find in camp as good butter as I ever ate came from Nova Scotia, and I ate it at latitude 68 degrees north. His cook outfit is the pride of the canoeist's heart. You will find hardly any two outfits alike. Aluminum is apt to be the material used in part, although the ex- perienced camper does not use an aluminum teacup, because it holds heat too long. The canoeman nearly 178 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT always has a stove, but one which will go in his pocket a little griddle with folding legs which he can thrust down into the ground, making his stove top any height he likes. Of course you can broil anything you like right on top of the stove, or you may use that as a support for your kettle or your frying-pan, or your coffee-pot, if the latter has no bail by which you can hang it over the fire on a stick. Above all, the canoe man prides himself on the smallness of his fire another Indian tradition. In a good camp, you may see sev- eral little fires going of an evening, each with a differ- ent outfit, any one of which is collapsible, condensible, portable and practical. I recall eating lunch one time with one young man in a canoe camp, when we had eggs, potatoes, rice, beefsteak and coffee, all cooked at the same time, on a stove not a foot across, and in a set of utensils which had been used to carry the grub to the cooking place. The entire outfit cost just twenty-five cents. In fact, it was nothing more nor less than one of these four-storied dinner pails, which workmen sometimes use to carry their lunches. Each compartment comes free, fitting into the top of the one below it, which is provided with a shallow flange. The whole locks together, the cover clamps down, and when the work- man picks up his pail by the handle he may be carry- 179 OUT OF DOORS ing off a dish of potatoes in the basement, a pork chop on the main floor, a piece of pie upstairs, and a can of coffee in the attic. Of course you can carry raw food in any one of these compartments, as this young man had. He now took his dinner pail apart and used each one of these compartments as a cooking ves- sel. It worked very handsomely. One trouble with such a cooking outfit is that it has no handles or bails. But a trifle like this would not disconcert a shifty canoeman. My host had in his pocket one of these Yankee pocket-knives which have all sorts of things concealed in them. When he wanted to lift the coffee-pot he did so with a hook which he found inside his knife. When he wished to shift the compartment in which he was boiling rice, he used the jaws of a pair of pliers which he also found in the knife and which he applied to the side of the bailless vessel just as though he intended to cut a piece of wire which also he could do if he wished. In short, with an outfit which had cost next to nothing, and which had little of weight or bulk, this young man and his wife cooked a meal for three, with no difficulty whatever, and a very good meal it was. Friend Wife washed the dishes. She was not a very large lady, and I have often wondered if her husband, an ardent canoeist, did not marry her be- cause, in part, of her portability. 180 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT Taking this young gentleman's camp as an instance, and this meal as a starting-point, we might have given quite an object lesson in neatness and dispatch. When the dishes were washed, the stove was folded up and put in a clean canvas cover. The dinner pail was as- sembled again, handle and all. Our plates, very light ones, went into a little packet. The unused raw food for the next meal was in the dinner-pail outfit. When the tent was rolled up it made a pack less than eight by twelve inches in size. The floor cloth covered the cargo. The clean, soft double blanket went into a bag, and another bag carried the clothing. These slender, round bags lay lengthwise in the hull of the canoe. At the staff on her bow fluttered the little burgee which lately had adorned the tent. The two paddles which had supported one end of the ridge pole now came into use. One trip from camp to boat served to carry the entire outfit, and when the little ship was loaded there was plenty of room for two or even three. Granted two men, with eight or ten times as much supplies as we had in this boat, added a tackle box, two rods, a rifle, or gun and ammunition, and still the boat would have ridden high and would have propelled easily. With one companion, a boy fourteen years old, I have paddled forty miles in two days up a very swift river with a pretty heavy camp outfit, and never felt uncomfortable either afloat or in 181 OUT OF DOORS camp. As a means for a week-end vacation trip, the canoe is not to be surpassed. Of course in the Canadian wilderness, in Maine and New Brunswick, the canoe is the guide's ship, the one means of transportation. The average man who goes into the woods does not know how to cut down his duffle, and the guides dread a city man on the portage. But with a rational outfit, two good ca- noeists can go far into the wilderness. I know of one man and his wife who were lost for a month in the Rainy Lake country, by themselves, in a country of which they knew nothing whatever rather a risky undertaking, to be sure, but one in which there was no disaster and no unbearable discomfort. This sum- mer the same gentleman and his wife and two children, with one Indian guide, manned two canoes and jour- neyed far into the lake and river region north of Lake Superior. They came back after a very happy and comfortable time. There are, of course, some experts in canoe hand- ling who like to take long and hard wilderness trips. The headwaters of the Mississippi River are some- times visited in this way, and the fast waters of the upper Wisconsin River are also popular. Maine is full of good canoeing waters, and the Adirondacks have long been a paradise for the little boats. But quite outside of these remote and somewhat expensive 182 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT regions for a canoe is bulky and awkward to send anywhere by express there are scores and hundreds of amiable little rivers close at home which can be used most pleasantly for short canoe trips. You never know a river until you run it, and even your local river where you have fished in restricted localities per- haps for many years becomes for you a highway of romance when you run fifty or sixty miles of it and come out at some railroad town below of which you have never heard. Thus to explore some near-by, comfortable stream not far away, not hurrying at all, taking your own time, using your own labor and not too much of it, going light and neat and clean, chang- ing your camp every day or so perhaps, and going in only for enough sport to give you food nothing is very much better for the city man. A week of this is better than many days of hurried golf. A season of it is better than any amount of life at a fashionable resort. As a fishing boat, the canoe cannot be called a suc- cess for the average amateur, although of course it is the fishing boat of the wilderness. Unless the canoe be large and roomy, and handled by an expert, the amateur would better do his fly-casting or bait-casting from some more stable platform. Fine canoes, in the so-called lake model, broad and beamy, provided with a little keel, a socket for a short mast, and a pair of 183 OUT OF DOORS light oars for upstream work, can be secured in weight quite within the portage capacities of two men of no very great strength or experience. A good light out- fit in a boat like this will afford a pair of vacationists about as much solid fun as they are apt to get else- where, no matter how much money they may wish to spend. A popular type of canoe is the sixteen- foot model, but guides who have to do much portaging will cut the size down to fourteen feet by choice, although this is too small for an amateur cruising craft with fair outfit. The only thing to be urged against the canoe and canoeing is the danger of it. One should know how to swim, but above all should know how to be careful, and to avoid taking risks in bad water or in high wind. Some cruisers have rigged an air tank in each end, so that the canoe will not sink. Others rely on air cushions inflated for seats rather wabbly and insecure seats they are. Some sort of life-preserver is a good thing to have about. I don't know anything smoother than the outside skin of an inverted canoe. The amateur, suddenly capsized, is mighty apt to for- get about the fancy stunts he has seen the experts do at the association meet. The best thing to do is to keep the canoe right side up, in comfortable water, and under no risky conditions. There is no sport which has had more care ex- 184 YOUR CANOE AND ITS OUTFIT pended on it by professional outfitters, and the result of all this has been that the canoeist can go out with the handsomest, nattiest and most complete outfit pos- sible to be obtained by any sportsman whatever. The boat in itself has lines that tell of ease, strength, grace and self-confidence, and, moreover, has a jaunty, high- bred air, one of quality and class, which endear it to the heart of the owner. With all its beauty, it is not so expensive, and once you have your outfit there is no sort of sport in which you will find it more difficult to spend very much money. Indeed, part of the game is to economize in everything weight, size, expense. With a portable canoe, which doesn't mind being used, a portable camp and cook outfit which never becomes aggravating, and a portable girl who doesn't mind get- ting freckled or even a companion like himself the plain North American citizen can get about as much out of everyday, plain, inexpensive canoeing as he can out of any other line of human endeavor. IX HINTS AND POINTS ON TROUT-FISHING IX HINTS AND POINTS ON TROUT-FISHING THE brook trout of our forefathers is still in our midst, and seems to be in some sort a permanent institution. Stock a stream with trout and it is rather difficult to fish it clean by fair methods, for few fishes are better able to fend for themselves. To be sure, by fair means or foul we manage to keep the supply cut down pretty low, from New England to the Rockies. Yet sufficient numbers remain, and probably long will remain, to enlist the activities of the subtlest intellects of the land. The study of the brook trout is something which never ends. No man ever has mastered it. Every time you go fishing for trout you learn something, and your grandson will take all your accumulated wisdom and learn yet something more each time he goes fishing. One of the fallacies about trout-fishing is that the worm will catch more trout than the artificial fly, and that said worm can only be applied successfully by a small boy with a broken hat. The facts do not bear out all the ancient stories. It is true that the bait- 189 OUT OF DOORS fishermen can reach some water where a fly cannot be cast, but taking the average bait-fisher with his short rod, short boots and short cast, he does not cover half the water that is reached by the well- equipped fly-fisherman with high waders and a long line well handled. I have known bait-fishers to look at the work of a skilled fly-fisherman and remark, "It's a mighty good thing for the trout that so many of us don't go after them with the fly." Certainly the art of fly casting once mastered, there are few who lay it down, granted any option, and none who do so' under feasible casting conditions. This would not be the case if fty fishing itself were not productive of results. The trouble with most fly-fishermen is that they don't know how to fish. It is impossible to learn that from any book, and some men never learn it at all they do not have the faculty of close observation. Moreover, there are no two streams which require to be fished alike. Watch the man who knows his own river. Even one accustomed to fishing in a certain dis trict may occasionally overlook a bet. Last spring a brother angler showed me something which I had learned only in a vague way before. Of course, we all know in a general way that trout are more apt to rise well on a freshet than in low, clear water; 190 TROUT-FISHING but that supposes that the trout are there all the time, and are only less wary when the water is discolored. In this case we fished the edge of a half dozen little streams which were running ten times their volume after a series of heavy rains. We knew there were trout in them, but no one knew there were such trout as we took. We caught a good basketful apiece, and they were larger in average than we had taken in the most famous rivers of that vicinity. The puzzle still remained with us whether these trout had come up from the larger waters on the freshet, or whether they had just come out from their hiding-places under the banks and bushes, unsettled, or perhaps embold- ened, by the changed action of the water. The new school of trout-fishing goes in the automo- bile, and in a day fishes not one stream but many. It was nothing for us to ride out thirty miles in the morning and back the same evening, and in one day we fished bits of eight streams that I remember. The wonder is that we have any fish or game left since the automobile has wiped out all distance. Certainly it was the automobile which taught us this last notion about the habits of trout in little streams. They came strong and decisively, not striking short, but seem- ingly trying to gorge the fly. High water must be hay-making time for the trout family. The next day our little streams were beginning to fall, and presto! 191 OUT OF DOORS our trout began to shrink in size and to become wary as ever. The cycle of twenty-four hours made all the difference in the world. In this fishing we learned, or learned more posi- tively, the virtue of another wrinkle in trout-fishing. It was many years ago that an old friend of mine showed me how to tie a buck-tail fly which really would kill trout, and big ones, often where other flies would fail. I have long classified this as the most deadly fly of my assortment, and in high and stained water it certainly makes good. You cannot get a good buck-tail fly from any dealer in the world, so far as I know they invariably cut off the hair too short and stiff. My instructor showed me how to tie this fly, which is the most impossible looking object in the world and the very thing which one would think apt to cause the trout to flee with shrieks for mercy. We always tied this fly on hooks much larger than those appropriate in the given local- ity for the ordinary artificial fly. For instance, where No. 8 was the usual size, we used No. 6, or much larger, for the buck-tail. Sometimes we tied the body out of deer hair, and .made the wings by just bending the hairs back at the neck. Sometimes we made the body and the wings separate. We never used any hackles unless by accident, for the ruder and coarser the fly the better it seemed to work. Tfie 192 TROUT-FISHING "wings" are never tied upright but kept low. Some- times we would cut the wings off from a big fly with a herl body, and substitute wings made of bucktail. Usually we found that the fly was better if made altogether of the deer hair. It does not seem to make much difference about the color. We came rather to fancy a white body, with wings mixed of gray and white, or gray and brown. Yet an enormous buck- tail which I tied of pure white hair a simply pre- posterous looking thing it was took some of our biggest trout in the high water. No one can explain this fancy on the part of trout. The buck-tail does not look like any insect in the world. Perhaps the trout takes it for a minnow, or perhaps thinks it some sort of a floating larva in its case. Again it may strike at it in curiosity, as a bass will at a spoon. I think that the deadliest quality of this fly is the crawl of the long hairs the ends should never be cropped off as it moves in the water. Sometimes I do not think the buck-tail is a very sportsmanlike proposition, because, in order to make it most effective, you should pull it up or across stream in a series of short jerks, a foot or two at once, then allowing it to drop back just a little. In this way it seems very much alive. Squirrel tail hair is no good. It is only the hair of the deer tail which does not mat down in the water, but which spreads out and seems to be alive. This fly 193 OUT OF DOORS seems to work in any country. In the Arctic Circle, three thousand miles above the country where I first saw it used, fault of anything better I made a rough buck-tail by flying a few hairs to a naked hook. The contrivance kept our camp in trout and grayling for some weeks. The brook trout has the reputation of being the shyest of fishes, but this is a matter open to doubt. I don't think a trout is so shy as a black bass, al- though to be sure he usually lives in a more restricted water and has not so far to run for a hiding-place. It is certain that on a freshet the habits of a trout change very much. In our little trip above men- tioned, we literally caught half-pound trout out in the grass of a meadow along an overflowed stream, and they pounced on the buck-tail as boldly as bass do on a frog in twilight. Their habitual caution seemed quite departed from them, as well as all their other usual habits. Ordinarily, however, you must be careful in ap- proaching your trout. There are two schools of fish- ing, upstream and downstream, not to mention the wet-fly and the dry-fly schools as well. The English system of fishing is usually upstream and with the dry fly, whereas the American angler in ninety per cent, of cases will fish wet-fly and downstream. It is more comfortable to fish downstream and you certainly can. 194 TROUT-FISHING kill fish in that way if you know how. Your course, with or against the grain of the stream, depends on the nature of the country where you are fishing. If you are on sandy bottom, or one of mud, or one with occasional mud bars, or any sort of detritus which will make the water roily when stirred up, you are apt to kill far more trout by fishing upstream if you know how to fish upstream. If you have never tried it it is quite worth your while, for it is apt to teach you many new things about trout. You can fish a much shorter line, and go up much closer on your fish, and mark them much better. You will not fish so much water in a day nor so comfortably, but slow, sure fishing is what puts good fish in the basket. And when you fish upstream you will see more brook trout than you would dream existed in the same stream fished down. As to dry-fly fishing, there is nothing occult about it. Try it for yourself, fishing upstream with rather a short line and going very slowly. In half a day you can learn enough about it to become interested. On a late trip, finding myself on a shallow, wide stream holding a great many small trout, I put in an afternoon in experimenting with the dry fly. I had a good five-and-a-half -ounce rod and a tapered line and leader, but unfortunately my flies were not ideal for dry work. Most of them were stream-pattern 195 OUT OF DOORS snecks, and they did not always ride through with the wings cocked. This proved no insuperable objection to the trout, however, regardless of what the books say about it. In all likelihood I raised three times as many trout fishing upstream with the floating fly as I could have done fishing wet and downstream. Most of these trout were small, because most of the large ones were still feeding on the bottom, eating larvae, bark cases and all. That quiet afternoon, how- ever, experimenting with the trout, made a very de- lightful experience which you can make your own al- most any summer's day in a trout country. At first the upstream fishing may not seem pleasant, because you are continually retrieving your line. But you learn how to keep the slack out of your line, how to value a short line, and how to go up on your fish. At one time, by accident, I blundered into the foot of a deepish pool with gravel bottom. At first a num- ber of trout left it, but as I stood still they began to settle back again, and I could see a couple of dozen good ones lying not more than ten feet from my feet. Making as slight commotion as possible, I tossed the fly in at the edge of the pool and took two good trout, which had to be led directly through the pool to the net. Then one or two rose short, one or two others just flashed up a little bit and then they were edu- cated. In an hour's work, during which I did not 196 TROUT-FISHING move out of my tracks, I could not get another rise from those trout, although I changed flies a dozen times. They lay there, not ten feet from me, moving a little bit now and then, but hanging to the pool until at length I made a step forward, when they disap- peared in a flash. Had I been fishing downstream I never would have seen these trout at all. If you fish upstream you are apt to do better in a much fished water, and if your trout are accustomed to the pounding of heavy, wet-fly fishing, it will be much worth your while to try the floating fly. You can soon learn the knack of making your fly float if you remember just one basic principle. Of course, you know how to flick your fly back and forward once or twice to dry, but that alone will not make it float. Pick out an imaginary spot in the air about four feet above the spot you wish your fly to strike. Cast at that imaginary spot. Your fly will drop down very lightly and will not be submerged. You hear a great deal about the thistledown quality of a fly, supposedly acquired by means of keeping your elbow fast to your side while you cast. There is nothing much more fallacious than that same elbow- to-the-side stunt. It is all right for a beginner, for it teaches him that it is his rod and not his arm which is to do the casting. But a good caster is like a good boxer, he can deliver a punch from any position. In 197 OUT OF DOORS actual practice most of us violate the conventional forty-five degrees rule, and slam a rod pretty welt in front of us in the forward cast. The books would call this contempt of court in dry-fly fishing, but let us go softly as to that. You may bring your rod clear down parallel with the water and still deliver a good dry fly, if you know how! Just keep your eye on that imaginary spot above the water and let your line extend to that and no farther. The fly will drop gently, in spite of all your violated rules. The real secret of any trout-fishing, and more espe- cially wet-fly fishing down a stream is to lay a straight line. If you will watch most casters you will find that the line drops in a series of curves, mussing up the water. This will not always take trout when they are shy. The straight line is the deadly one, because when a trout strikes at the fly you are more apt to fasten him. As a matter of fact, about half the trout which you think you strike in reality hook themselves. They will not do this on a floating fly if you are fishing up- stream, and you are sure to miss very many more strikes in that kind of fishing than when you are at the usual game of chuck-and-chance-it downstream. As to this thistledown business in fly fishing, it is not always necessary. A trout is half shy and half bold, he is scared but he has to make his living. You can slam a big buck-tail down on the water in front 198 TROUT-FISHING of a trout just as you can a big frog in front of a bass, and he will run at it and not away from it. But the way to do that is to let him see as little of you and your line as possible. In some fishing, however, you don't want to be too quiet. I once fished with a chap who had a sort of style of his own in trout-fishing. When he saw a good log or rock where he thought trout was hiding, he would flick at the water over it a half dozen times or so, making considerable fuss on the water, and not in the least casting a light fly. Then he would drop the fly just above and let it float down. In very many cases he would thus get his trout. He called it teasing the trout into striking. It was the opposite of what you would call good trout-fishing, but it worked. I am inclined to think that it did anger a trout so that he struck just out of annoyance. Some streams are not suitable for this sort of fishing, but in hundreds of cases I have tried this trout-teasing with success. Once I stood casting a line not over fifteen feet and counted over forty casts before at last I raised a trout and hooked him, every cast cutting the water a little bit. That trout certainly was warned, yet it came out at last. You can't tell all about trout-fishing the first day you fish. I am inclined to believe, however, that the real secret of this style is the final floating down of the dry fly over the place where the water has been 199 OUT OF DOORS disturbed. You might amuse yourself some time by trying this. It is best done on a stream full of sunken logs or other good hiding-places. Alore trout are lost by bad wading than by bad casting. Of course, if you do not know your stream you may blunder into the good water, but if you are approaching a hole where you know there are some trout, the best way is to stand perfectly still in your chosen position for four or five minutes before you make a move. Then cast quietly as you can. The trout seem to think you are a stump, or something of the kind. I have often wondered if they know domestic animals from men. Usually we think that if a man wades through a trout hole the trout will not rise again for a long time. Not long ago a friend and myself stood and watched three or four cows wade deliberately through a trout hole which we in- tended to fish. We thought that settled the matter, but to prove it began to cast as soon as the cows were out of the way, and we took a couple of good trout. I presume they were used to seeing cows, but I don't know and, in short, no one knows very much about what trout will or will not do. Another fault almost as bad as too rapid fishing is the use of too long a line. Of course, part of the fun in trout-fishing is to cast, and that is how we learn to cast, but for really putting trout in the basket a 200 TROUT-FISHING slow foot and a short line are better. This means, unless you are very careful, that you will not always cast a gentle line, or a straight one. In all likelihood you will be using too much force for so short a line, especially if you are using a good modern, quick- acting, split bamboo rod. Most of the action of these modern rods is up at the tip, and if you put too much force into them they overshoot. I have one splendid, powerful rod which is capable of laying out all sorts of line, and which takes a very heavy line to make it begin to act. Every day I fish that rod I have to learn it over again. Unless humored, it is the nastiest rod one ever saw, and lays a miserabfe, wrinkled line. The fact is, it requires hardly more than a gentle pointing forward of the rod to pitch its line a good fishing distance and lay it straight. Some rods you have to humor, and this is one of them. Of course, what it craves is a heavy tapered line and a reach of sixty feet or more. Study your own rod, therefore, and let your line balance it, being just heavy enough to induce it to lay a straight, comfort- able line, a good fishing distance. You will catch abundance of trout downstream at thirty feet, and upstream at twenty feet or yes, even at ten feet, as I can testify! All of which is somewhat confound- ing to the doctors, perhaps, but is easily capable of proof at your own hands. 201 OUT OF DOORS Your tackle salesman very probably will want you to buy a tapered line. It may or may not be best for you. In dry-fly fishing it is fine, for then you lay out about nine feet of tapered leader and not much more than that of tapered line, and both will float, especially if you keep your line well greased with deer fat. But if you have a long taper on your line and are fishing rather a stiffish rod, you will not find it to handle very well, because the weight will not be sufficient to set your rod in action. For ordinary fishing the level line, as it is called, is apt to be more comfortable, and many an angler has deliberately cut off the tapered part of an expensive line, because he could not handle it in the wind. This brings us to yet another mooted point in trout- fishing. We are taught by the books to use a nine- foot leader, and taught by the tackle salesman to have that leader tapered to a point of fine-drawn gut. Now take that fine leader and a bit of tapered line back of it and try to fish it in the wind, especially with two or three flies attached. You are tangled up all the time, and can't get anywhere, and can't lay a straight, comfortable line. Your equipment has defeated your purpose. Upon the other hand, if you fish a leader six, five or four feet long, of medium gut, and per- haps a single-eyed fly only, backed by a level line of weight appropriate to your rod, you would find your- 202 TROUT-FISHING self master of existing conditions. You could drive your fly into the wind, could cast accurately, and could keep your line straight on the water. Sometimes I think that any man with a short and rather stout leader and a buck-tail fly and a short line can go out and skin any man who fishes three flies on light gut and tapered lines. This, of course, is heresy, and it will not work on very bright or very much fished waters, perhaps. It will often work on waters which have been fished steadily for fifty years. You can fish a buck-tail fly with a two-foot leader, or with scarcely any leader at all, and take trout with it. With flies of less compel- ling quality it is better to be a little longer and a little lighter with our tackle. You yourself, none the less, will find great interest in experimenting along both extremes. Your results will leave it difficult to lay down any hard and fast rule about trout. A great many fishermen cling to the old snelled hook and to the leader with two or three flies attached. The tendency today is towards the single-eyed fly. You can carry many more of the eyed flies in a book, and they don't tangle up, and they are not lost by the gut breaking off at the head. Moreover, you can cast one fly more accurately than you can two or three. Beware the man with the single fly and the short leader and straight line. He may cause you to open 203 OUT OF DOORS your basket lid several times during the afternoon to estimate how you are coming along. Most fisher- men, or at least many even today, use a dropper, or two droppers, on the cast. There is this to be said in favor of it, that the hand fly is more apt to play on the surface of the water. In some streams and at some seasons it is the surface fly which kills trout. A friend of mine, well seized of this latter point in trout lore, invented a system of droppers peculiar to himself and it seems to work very well. He hangs his hand fly, or closest dropper, on a piece of gut at least eighteen inches long, sometimes attaching this at the leader knot. As he is rather a tall man and uses a ten-foot rod, this arrangement keeps this hand fly dibbling and dabbling on the top of the water as he retrieves. He finds that this fly kills a great many of his trout. Of course, this long dropper snell is always getting mixed up with the leader. I have tried that, but find that these mussed-up droppers in- cline me more and more to stick to the single fly on a medium weight leader in practical fishing. Each to his taste. This same gentleman taught me a wrinkle in tackle which never occurred to me before. Of course, you know how to do two or three different leader knots, for fastening your lines to the leader loop. Some men even whip a gut loop to the end of the line, 204 TROUT-FISHING leaving it there permanently, so that there shall be no knot to muss up the water. My friend's scheme beats that. Of course, you know the water knot, by which you fasten two strands of gut together. It never slips, even though you cut the ends close. This idea is simply the use of the water knot in joining the leader and the line. They hold as well as two pieces of gut, and you can cut the ends close as you please. The total sacrifice of line in a season is not so much, and by the use of this knot your line and leader are prac- tically continuous. And yet this same ingenious and efficient trout- fisherman does not know how to carry his landing-net. He hangs it, as perhaps you do yours, over the shoulder on a rubber cord. That means that the net swings just low enough to catch in every piece of brush he passes, and to swing them between his legs as he wades. It is the way most trout-fishermen carry their nets, and it is the worst way imaginable. A better way would be to shove the net into the pocket of a shooting-coat which makes a good fishing-jacket also. There are some nets which are carried in a cylinder attached to a strap fastening over the shoulder. As a matter of fact you don't really need a landing-net very much in ordinary trout-fishing where the trout run under a pound. If you must have one, get a neat, oval one with a short handle. 205 OUT OF DOORS Fix a neat leather loop at the end of the bow and cut a buttonhole in it. Fix a bachelor's button, clamped on at the back of the neck of your shooting- coat. Hang the net on that. It will always be ready and always out of the way. The best landing-net I ever saw was a simple bow which had a telescopic handle of metal. It was a trifle heavy for wading, however, and in wading you don't really need a long- handled net. I don't think the handle on my landing- net is a foot long, yet I find it will reach good trout on the rapids, and that is all you need. Much of your comfort in trout-fishing will depend on your waders. You can get imported waders now about two and a half pounds in weight. They will last one season, perhaps longer, although not so durable as the heavier material. Such waders you can put into your coat pocket. Of course, you put on wool stockings and some sort of wading shoes over them. An extra pair of stockings is a good thing to have along if you have a long walk at the close of the day's fishing. I usually carry along a pair of moccasins in my coat pocket, and carry home the waders and wad- ing shoes on my back. It is very hard to walk in the waders themselves, and it is not good for the waders, as they get chafed, and so soon learn how to leak. Most of the American waders are heavy and clumsy, being merely heavy rubber boots with exten- 206 TROUT-FISHING sion tops. The English goods are better than ours in this respect. You can get good English waders with light tops and leather feet and felt soles, and these make equipment very difficult to beat for the stream fisherman. The trout-fisherman's reel is not very important, and a simple click is good enough. My ingenious friend above-mentioned always goes trout-fishing with a bass casting-reel and multiplier. Of course, he ought to be imprisoned for that. On the other hand, he al- ways says that I ought to be imprisoned because I fancy a large-barrelled single-action click reel, with a big agate ring in front, made in England and not in the United States. In extenuation I plead that next year I shall probably have two or three more new reels, just as you will yourself. As wide a divergency will be found as to rods. My friend usually carries a rod or so extra along in case of breakage, and al- though he has more money than a dog could jump over, he professes that thirty dollars is too much for any fly rod. If my own rods were not better than his, as I tell him very comfortably, I could not enjoy fish- ing. In general, as you need not be reminded, there is no accounting for trout and their vagaries, and there is no accounting for the vagaries of the men who pur- sue them. In combination the two make joy peren- nial. Join these ranks and you never will depart 207 OUT OF DOORS therefrom. Having joined, one word may be of use to you be practical and simple in your trout-fishing, as in all other activities, and don't believe everything you read in the papers. Use your own judgment in buying stocks or buying rods. Require to be shown; experiment, and yet again experiment, for in that way lies knowledge alike for yourself and for your friends. X YOUR BIRD DOG: HOW TO USE HIM X YOUR BIRD DOG: HOW TO USE HIM AMONG the curiosities of literature is the fact that there seems to be perennial demand for books on dog-training. Many a mute, inglorious Milton of whom you never heard has writ- ten a simple and unpretentious book on dog-breaking which has netted him in royalties more than most authors can claim for their best novels. Everybody owns a dog or is interested in a dog or ought to be. There are physicians who minister to dogs, profes- sors who educate them, guides and counselors who tell what to do with them. In case you own a dog-^ and, of course, you do you very probably have bought some book about dogs or are intending to buy such a book some day. These things are true, although there is less use for a bird dog today than once was the case in this country. Whatever may be the need of bird dogs today, we have more of them now than ever before, even though we have fewer birds, and not only the number, but the value, of the bird dogs of today far surpasses the 211 OUT OF DOORS best records of the halcyon time when everyone had a bird dog and everyone with little trouble or expense could find good shooting over him. Today a good bird dog is worth as much as a race-horse and is handled much like one. Bench shows and field trials have changed the looks, stature and qualifications of the dog of modern times. The bird dog of today is a commercialized product. His price, if not his value, has increased. He is an artificial proposition, like the three-dollar shoe or the buffet flat or the moving-picture show. Perhaps he is old at five or six years today, but even so he may have paid his way very well on a commercial basis, more especially if he has been fortunate enough to win some of the largest stakes in the field or on the bench. The tendency of human nature to run after suc- cess the craze for successful or fashionable blood in a strain of setters or pointers has left its imprint on most of the bird dogs of today. A great many of them are overbred, overnervous, too much accentu- ated. In dog history our leading strains date back to certain great individuals who lived at rather a remote time in the past. Perhaps in the future we may by accident develop some such great individuals, some William the Conquerors in setters, some Charlemagnes in pointers, which will give history a new starting- 212 YOUR BIRD DOG point. Just at present, however, that does not seem especially probable. You must accept your bird dog today as you find him, a creature of changed conditions, and one which must be fairly well adapted to existing conditions, else he himself would not exist. Your bird dog of to- day is not the grand, upstanding, heavily feathered specimen of your father's or your grandfather's choice. He is apt to be a smallish fellow, not two- thirds the weight he would have had forty years ago. His coat is light, his skin very thin and delicate. He is alert, keyed-up, eager. He can go perhaps half the day, perhaps two or three hours, before you need to replace him with another dog. Perhaps his sire or grands ire, which was worth two or three thousand dollars because of certain fame, won that fame in a test of twenty minutes or so of top-speed work against some other dog almost as fast and nervous. Of course, the real test between two dogs ought to be a matter of a week's work. Our old dogs could hunt day by day as long as we wanted to hunt. Once in a while you will find such a dog today ; but he is not apt to have a great deal of speed. Perhaps his nose will not be especially keen, either he may have somewhere an outcross of cold blood in his ancestry. What does your good, modern bird dog cost you? Perhaps somewhere around one hundred and fifty 213 OUT OF DOORS dollars, on a minimum basis if you are a city man and have to hire him trained. To be sure, as good dogs as you ever saw are bought for forty or fifty dollars already trained. The best dog I ever owned cost me twenty-five dollars and would not have been sold at five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars although it was poisoned within the second year after purchase. There was a natural bird dog which really needed very little training. It was of wholly unknown pedigree and was found on a farm owned by an honest farmer who had annexed it from a pass- ing wagon. Perhaps in your own experience you have been fortunate enough to get a good dog at a rea- sonable price. But usually you pay an unreasonable price for a half dozen dogs and do not turn out one good one from the lot. The reason for this is that game is not so generally distributed today, dogs are not so widely owned, and they do not get so general a use in actual field work. There are a great many sportsmen who live in cities where they are unable even to keep a bird dog, much less train one. The city man must send his dog to a trainer for education. The latter will charge him about one dollar a week for boarding the dog. The training fees will run from twenty-five dollars up to a couple of hundred. Very often the trainer gives his dog more board than he does work. Even 214 YOUR BIRD DOG so, figure that he keeps your puppy for you a couple of years, you will have to pay him around one hundred and fifty dollars in return for something which is wholly problematical. If nature has been very kind to the dog, he may be developed into a shooting-dog at a cost of somewhere between one hundred and two hundred dollars. In the average human experience, however, scarcely one dog out of a half dozen proves to be worth developing something goes wrong with him and he rarely ever becomes a good shooting-dog. Take into consideration the expense of your failures and perhaps the average city sportsman will find that his first practical shooting-dog has cost him some- where between five hundred and one thousand dollars about as much as a motor car. It looks discourag- ing, but there is always this great factor in quest of the golden dog, that when you do get him you would not trade him for any limousine on earth. The figures of expense in his pursuit and his use are things to be concealed from Friend Wife. Granted good blood for your dog, good health, and a naturally good nose, his value depends on the trainer who handles him for the first couple of years of his life. There are good dog-trainers ; but there are many more who are wholly unreliable. Be careful in the selection of your trainer. Go to his place and see how his dogs look. Have a day's shooting with him 215 OUT OF DOORS and note how he handles his dogs. All too often a dog of little promise is left in the feeding yard. If fortune gives the trainer in his string of inmates one dog of much promise, he is very apt to develop this dog at the expense of the others, especially if there is an opportunity to enter this dog in field trials with his handler in on a division of the money. In general, if you want a shooting-dog of your own, don't send him to any man who trains dogs for field trial pur- poses. In general also, pick out a trainer who has a wife or daughter who will take a hand in looking after the welfare of the dogs. These things, you will ob- serve, narrow down your choice of dog-trainers very much. None the less they explain the scarcity of good shooting-dogs today. The tricky and dishonest dog-trainer is, happily, less numerous than the shiftless and inefficient one. Such a man may be a shrewd handler, but also be a shrewd business man. You send him your valuable dog to keep for you after the end of the shooting season. A month or so disappears and you get a let- ter from the tricky trainer, saying that unfortunately your dog has been run over by a railroad train. In that case, it is just as well to ask the trainer to send you the hide of the dog don't accept the collar. Cases have been known where valuable dogs were sold by trainers, who reported them back as dead. 216 YOUR BIRD DOG Of course, if you live in a shooting country, or in a small community, where you have your own home and can keep your own dog, the expense of owning bird dogs is much lessened and the pleasure much in- creased. You can very often get a good bird dog puppy, with or without pedigree, for ten, fifteen or twenty dollars. The great delight will be the training which you yourself can give him. That is better than buying a dog alleged to be trained. The last five dogs purchased by myself cost, respectively, twenty-five, fifty, two hundred, one hundred and twenty-five, and seventy-five dollars. Of these only the first and last amounted to anything. Number two was with difficulty given away after one day's trial. Number three was a case of delivery of a worthless dog instead of one which a year earlier had been seen to be an excellent performer in the field. Num- ber four just didn't have it in him. Number one was the unknown earlier mentioned as a natural bird dog. Number five is not for sale at any price. A dog of good blood, he cost his owner more than three hun- dred dollars in training fees. Happily he is a fine example of what is known as a gentleman's shoot- ing-dog; that is to say, he is fast, can go as long as his owner likes, has a grand nose, an instinct for finding birds, an education which leaves him docile and well in hand. 217 OUT OF DOORS Suppose that you have gotten one good dog out of your six last efforts. What is he apt to be today, pro- vided that he is a typical product of a good strain? He is apt to be compact, small, nervous, thin-skinned, yet showing blood in his lines and intelligence in his face. He'll have life and quality about him, like any thoroughbred. Do not purchase your dog until you have seen him work. In my own case I took out my last acquisition for his first trial on prairie chickens a bird he had never seen. He went to work like a veteran, pointing to a covey high-headed at one hun- dred yards. "Some class about that !" exclaimed my shooting friend. Next the dog proved able to handle ruffed grouse in thick cover a far more difficult proposition. "More class," said my friend. The dog, a stranger to us both and we both strangers to him, went on about his work and found a dozen coveys of quail that day. This was trial enough for any dog. And when we lost him in a bit of cover, and, after whistling and shouting in vain for five minutes, at last discovered him on a dead point, deaf to all the world, and gloating over his last covey of quail we knew we had that sought for treasure, a real shoot- ing-dog. Such a dog, any sportsman would agree, is worth almost any kind of money. The price of such a dog is a varying thing not in the least representa- tive of value either way. 218 YOUR BIRD DOG Now, supposing that you had such a dog, the prod- uct of six efforts to get a bird dog, your compact, speedy little fellow would go into a buggy or a motor car comfortably. Moreover, since he has been shipped here and there through cities in his various travels to suit the convenience of his owner or his trainer, he will jump into a taxi promptly and curl down on the seat. Being a good traveler, he will lie down in the baggage car on a railway journey and not tug at his chain and bark and make the baggage man more unhappy than he is. In short, he is a practical dog for conditions of sport as you must practise it. Next, your dog has speed. He came from a family that had speed. In short, he must have speed today, because coveys of birds are less easily found than once was the case and he must cover more country in order to find them. He is, therefore, a practical proposition. For the sake of his speed and gameness a half day at a time, you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of his ability to go throughout a week of hard travel the fastest dogs cannot travel a week through nowadays. If your dog has been well broken, and has asso- ciated with decent people, he is strictly businesslike. At the end of his day's work he gets his dinner and his drink and curls up to sleep. He doesn't bark and nose around the camp table and make himself obnoxious. He is quite companionable. Yet he is strictly business. 219 OUT OF DOORS This is what we call the "old-fashioned" sort of dog, and such a dog, who tends to his own knitting and lets the others do the prowling around, is nearly always popular among shooters. A dog of such independent character will perhaps seem to you at first a trifle aloof and indifferent of spirit. Why should he not be? Another man has trained him and fed him. You yourself have not seen him before the time when you took him out to hunt he does not know you as his master. That is the great trouble for the city sportsman some other man receives the best affection of the dog which he owns as a piece of property and which he rarely sees. Now, any good dog wants one master and no more. A setter is perhaps more apt to be faithful to one man than the pointer the latter breed is full of hunt and will follow any man with a gun. Yet absolutely the best pointer I ever knew would hunt with no one but her master. And absolutely the best cocker spaniel I ever knew was a one-man dog to an extent almost ludicrous he would not allow any one to touch his master, would not allow the hand of another to be laid upon him, kept his master in sight every hour of the day, and slept on his arm at night like a child. Fate is kind to you if it gives you the worship, sole and undivided, of a real bird dog. Taking your dog just as he is, and supposing that 220 YOUR BIRD DOG once out of six times he is worth while, there are some things which you ought to bear in mind regard- ing him and his use. For instance, he lives at his trainer's place two or three hundred miles from your city. That means that he must travel occasionally by express in a box or crate. When you have him shipped, see that he has food and water. Tip the baggage man, the express agent, especially if the journey is to be a long one; pass the word down the line that it will be worth while to care for that dog, to feed him, water him and even to exercise him if he is out for more than one day and night. In camp use your dog well. When he comes in from the field, don't let him lie down in the wind or on cold, wet ground take care of him, make him a bed where he will be warm. The modern bird dog is not hardy as a wolf. Heated up by his exercise, he will chill off quickly when he stops running, just as you do yourself, and he has no extra coat which he can put on. Feed your dog lightly in the morning, if at all; still more lightly in the middle of the day, but feed him all he wants to eat at night. During the hunting hours see that he gets water often, espe- cially if the weather be warm. It is very hot down in the grass where a dog is obliged to work. No dog, still less the delicate bird dog of today, is able to go like a machine without great physical discomfort. 221 OUT OF DOORS Care for your dog, therefore, during the day and do not go on thoughtlessly, bent on your own enjoyment and supposing that all dogs have a way of taking care of themselves. Such is not the case. If water is not abundant in the country where you are hunting, take some along in a canteen in the motor car or buggy or at the saddle horn. The average city shooter who gets his dog on from his trainer is apt to be forgetful of these things, because he is not used to handling dogs in the field. In time your dog will get to be very much like you. If you are excitable and unreasonable, he is apt to become so himself. You ought to remember that hardly any two dogs have just the same temperament, and you ought to remember that no dog understands" human speech. You are addressing yourself to an embryonic intelligence. The dog's brain is vague, unformed very shrewd in some specialized instinc- tive ways, but not at all the same brain that is owned by a man. Any man worthy the name will not penal- ize or punish his dog simply because he does not at once do what he is asked to do. For instance, your dog has been broken to retrieve a very beautiful, yet very risky, part of a bird dog's education. He wants to get his mouth on that bird as soon as it drops. If you don't watch him closely he is apt to break shot and run in as soon as a 222 YOUR BIRD DOG bird is knocked down, and thus perhaps put up birds which otherwise would have lain to the gun. The time to punish your dog for that is not after he has the bird in his mouth and is bringing it to you, but before he starts in to pick up the bird. Why does he start in? In nine cases out of ten, because you yourself were thinking of the bird and not of the dog; you went on with your shooting or loading or marking the flight and did not promptly stop the dog where he was. In order to have a perfectly broken field dog, you must be willing to sacrifice a little bit of your own sport now and then. If your dog is very un- steady, perhaps you will let a friend do the shooting while you watch your dog. A check collar and rope will steady him. Some shooters use a long buggy whip and bring it down across the dog's back if he starts to break shot, calling to him at the same time, "Whoa!" or "Drop!" If your friend would bring the whip down across your own back once in a while, it would have a similarly restraining effect. In many and many a case it is the sportsman who needs the check collar and not his dog. Chasing his birds is the trick of a puppy and it is one of the most easily curable faults of a bird dog. The check cord is useful here. Very soon the dog will learn that he has been at fault; but don't whip your dog too late for chasing be sure he knows 223 OUT OF DOORS what it is about. It is inhuman and wholly ineffectual to punish a dog when he does not understand why. False pointing is something usually due to the lack of a dog's confidence in his own nose. Don't whip your dog for false pointing. Simply use him more and more until his nose gets a chance to detect the difference between game birds and mice or moles. The dog which jumps promptly and positively into its points, which is always sure of itself you respect that dog, of course, the same as you do a man of posi- tive nature but you don't find that sort every day in the week. There is no more use in licking your dog for something that he cannot help than there is for snubbing your friend for the same reason. Blinking his point is something which a querulous owner or handler may teach his dog. I once had a grand young dog, I think the finest specimen of a pointer I ever saw, one which ought to have been a noble individual in the ranks of shooting-dogs, but he was really quite worthless. Why? He was so fast as a puppy and so eager that his trainer could not keep up with him, and puppy like, now and then, he would flush a bird. His trainer whipped him for this, tied a log chain to him to slow him down, and, in short, every time he found a bird punished him. Bold and courageous as this dog was, he began to think that he ought not to point birds. I have seen 224 YOUR BIRD DOG him point a covey on a stubble field and then, the hair rising all along his back in anger or fear some emotion acquired in his education and not in his breed- ing turn around and leave the birds where they were. This dog could find as many birds as any dog, but he rarely would point, and if left alone took a savage delight in chasing up the birds and setting them afire. It was bad handling that was responsible for that punishment administered when the dog did not know what it was about. The bird dog which will point singles is the one over which you are apt to get your bag. Your fast, eager, high-headed dog is the one to find coveys for you. If after the covey rises, he will go to work on singles patiently, then you have a bird dog. If you have one which will patiently hunt for a dead bird or a cripple, so much the better. But don't whip the dog unreasonably if he does not wish to go and hunt for the lost bird. His instinct is to be off after more birds. If you whip him when he has that thought in his mind, you have cause and effect twisted. In- deed, cause and effect are twisted in nine cases out of ten in which dogs are punished by their masters or handlers. The instinct of the average shooter is to whip his dog whenever the latter does not do what he wants him to do at once. Patience and care alone can develop the ideal bird dog. Therefore, if your 225 OUT OF DOORS dog won't hunt the lost bird, don't bang him about, but be kindly with him. Reward him when he has found the bird, and don't whip him for not finding it. Bear in mind also that curious trait of indifference which hunting dogs have for dead game after it is down. If you will take from your box a half dozen dead birds, your bird dog will only sniff at them and go away. He has no delight after he knows they are accounted for. Some retrievers are force-broken. In this case, punishment may be needed to make them hunt close for a dead bird. The all-around bird dog the sort we used to call an ideal meat dog, rarely exists today. There are some individuals which will hunt two or three differ- ent species of game birds instinctively or by training. The average bird dog in the United States today is broken on quail. You cannot enjoy this beautiful sport unless you have a good bird dog. If a good one one all your own, well in hand, with a good nose and speed and stamina to travel as long as you like then you may have what many consider the best sport obtainable in America. In my own case, I think that quail-shooting and fly-fishing for trout are the two best sports that we have in this country. As soon go fly fishing without a fly rod as quail-shooting without a well-broken dog. Before the shooting season opens, one ought to 226 YOUR BIRD DOG have his dog hardened down by good exercise and he should advise his trainer to that effect. Road work behind a horse and buggy is as good as anything. One ought not to run a dog to death following up a bicycle, and, of course, the motor car is out of the question. Indeed, the gasoline engine has had its effect on our bird dogs as it has on almost every other phase of sport. It is making our dogs smaller and weaker, fatter and less useful. When you are working your dog in the field, avoid the bad habit of calling to him all the time. He doesn't understand what it is all about. Let him alone. If he is a bird dog at all, he has the instinct to hunt. If he is intelligent, he will hunt to the gun that is to say, he will follow your general course as you advance in your hunting. You should keep him in sight as much as possible, but not interrupt him at his work by continual shouting and whistling. The hard- est thing to teach a dog is to come to you when you want him. Why ? Because too often the dog has been taught that when he does come, it is only to receive a licking and not a reward. Would you be keen to go up to your boss if you were sure he was going to thrash the life out of you as soon as he could get his hands on you? Reason about these things. Re- member that you are addressing a vague and un- formed intellect, which does not think as you think. 227 OUT OF DOORS You must deal only on broad lines in reaching the intelligence of this willing and faithful servant. The prime instinct of a dog is to find birds for him- self ; the acquired instinct, intensified by many genera- tions of careful training, is that under which the dog identifies you with his find. There are a few dogs in Norway which are known as reporters. They will leave the covey of the birds when found, go and locate the shooter and bring him back to the birds, which they point again. This trait is well defined and well authenticated, but is rare or unknown in this country. None the less, if you examine your bird dog while he is on his point, you will see him now and then turn his head away. He will see you out of the corner of his eye, will incline his head a little towards you, then slowly bring it back in line with the object which has produced in him that strange, almost cataleptic, condition of the pointing dog. He knows that you are in on the play. He wants to hear the sound of the gun and he wants to see the bird fall. If you are a very poor shot, you will be handicapped by never having the undivided allegiance of any real bird dog he is apt to pick out some one else among your friends, the sort of man of whom folks say: "He nearly always has a good bird dog around him." Such a man and such a dog understand each other naturally. If you are that kind of man, it doesn't 228 YOUR BIRD DOG take long for your dog to establish a lasting friendship with you. And he takes you into all his calculations, even when he points. Very likely he is prouder and more tolerant in nature than you. He doesn't bite you every time you miss a bird. If he did you could not walk home. You may have seen an efficient shooting dog, a cowed and hanging back sort of affair, with little spirit left, do the bidding of some market hunter or other, and do it well. In the best sense of the word, however, I do not believe that any ideal, gentleman's shooting-dog ever belonged to anybody but a gentle- man. A dignified owner gives dignity to his dog. The grand old dogs of earlier times, when we had abun- dant game and abundant leisure, nearly always were dogs which belonged in good families. In those days we had handsome, big setters and pointers, brainy, individual dogs, which knew nothing of training as we understand it today, but which were like the men who owned them. So may your dog be like you today; yet you both live under changed conditions. Our dogs have changed, and we with them, because the times have changed. The dogs which take down money in the field or on the bench today would not have been of value fifty years ago. But they are in better tune with the times than would be their old- time ancestors. 229 OUT OF DOORS Adjustment, compromise, acceptance of existing conditions are things which control the sport of today as we find it. Lucky the man who has a place to keep and train a good bird dog. If the dog favors him as his one master, be sure that is the one lasting and indissoluble friendship. The dog has a noble soul not servile and fawning and selfish as is the cat; not ignorant and weak-minded as is the horse but large-minded, owning some sixth sense which we human beings do not in the least understand, some sixth sense which gives the dog more breadth of nature, more charity, more kindness, than are owned by his master. The dog's friendship is a beautiful and wonderful thing, something which no man really understands and something which all too few men really deserve. Take the bird dog puppy, the soft, fuzzy little creature, his eyes still blue, his voice still squeaky feed him and bed him and care for him, teach him to be a gentleman, because you are one yourself you are laying foundations for a friendship which will cause you grief when its end comes. Use that dog with reason and with dignity not asking him to forget this strange, undefined sixth sense, so beyond this proud intellect of your own live with him, think with him, work with him, until he knows who you are and what you want and then you are getting 230 YOUR BIRD DOG one of the delights of life for whose absence nothing of success can really atone. To have a dog meet you at night when you come home from work and look you in the face and welcome you to have him wake you in the morning with his cold nose and tell you it is time to go to work again these are things no fel- low ought to be without. Of course, some of us do lack them. In that case, we must compromise and do the best we can. But in no case should any man in the world be without a dog; if he can help it. XI YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT XI YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT THE development of the sport of trap-shooting at targets has kept us Americans in the front rank of users of the shotgun in spite of the gradual disappearance of our opportunities for field-shooting. In the old days of general abundance of wild game, the average man in this country could learn to shoot in the field. In the old world, skill with the shotgun has long been an accomplishment belong- ing to relatively few, and those of the privileged classes. Today our lessening game supply has de- prived us of much of the popular enjoyment of field sports once so general, so that although today more Americans own shotguns than ever before, and al- though they are better trap-shots than the world ever before saw, still we have lost standing as a race of good wing shots, odd as that paradox may sound. Trap-shooting at targets seems rather mechanical to the man following his own gun and dog. It per- fects the skill of any user of the shotgun, and it has become so general in America that our better amateur 235 OUT OF DOORS trap-shots have no difficulty in accounting for the best of any other nation. In Europe the sport of trap- shooting is not made a business, as it is here. Targets thrown from towers, from behind hedges and screens, at unexpected times and angles, are there thought to afford better practice for the shotgun than the sys- tematic target grinding of the average American tour- nament. But what shall the American boy do who wishes to learn the old-time gentleman's accomplishment of wing-shooting in the field? Of course, this is some- thing he ought to know, as he should know how to swim, skate, ride, to sail a boat, and to do many other things in the way of manly accomplishment. Of course, the best thing for him would be to take regular instruction on the gun as he would on any other instrument, although few American parents take the trouble to ground their sons so carefully in the use of weapons. The average boy picks up his own education with the shotgun, hit or miss. Carelessness is part of the average boy, and care- less habits formed early in life are apt to persist. Go to any trap-shoot, and watch the careless way in which many a grown-up uses his gun. Of course, shooters are not allowed to have loaded guns except on the fir- ing line, and they are obliged to follow strict rules there, but often you will be horrified to see even skill- 236 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT ful shooters standing with a hand over the muzzle of the gun, leaning on it, allowing it to point at their per- sons or at the person of someone else. And always the answer to any protest will be, "Why, it is not loaded." The same carelessness is noticeable in many men in shooting in the field. Indeed, one cannot be too care- ful in choosing his company in the field. Certainly we need education of our young shooter's before they be allowed to use a weapon so dangerous to themselves and others as is the shotgun. In England the youth quite often is sent to a pro- fessional gun tutor, but in this country that function- ary is not yet generally known, although in time it may be as customary to send a boy to a shooting school as it is now to send him to a riding school or a gram- mar school. Moreover, this part of a boy's educa- tion ought not to be so much education as discipline in the severest sense of the word. No man, even one who has had the most careful tuition in his youth, has ever shot all his life without knowing of some shotgun accident or being party to one, on the one side or the other. Neither is there any weapon so dangerous as the shotgun at short range. To drive home this fact into a careless boy's mind is some- thing which cannot be done by a few gentle words. It takes discipline, the same discipline as that which makes the soldier. 237 OUT OF DOORS The writer has a friend who goes through life minus his left hand. Cause a hand rested on a gun muzzle as he stood on a log. Last year a leading lawyer, an acquaintance of the writer, had his head blown off by a companion. Cause two guns in a duck boat. The writer once saw a young man who had an arm amputated because of a gunshot wound. He died. Cause dragging a gun under a fence, muzzle toward himself. A dozen other accidents of like sort come to mind, so serious that it causes one's blood to run cold to see mere boys, unattended and untrained, running around, perhaps several with one gun between them, and all wrangling as to who shall shoot it next. The time to teach a boy to shoot is right at the beginning. That is the time to teach both carefulness in handling firearms, and also good form and eti- quette in handling them. Of course, the first lesson should be as to the ex- treme danger of the gun. The teacher, whether the parent or someone else, should tell the boy all the horrible stories of accidents that he can think o'f. Take him out in the open, and blow a hole through a board with the shotgun, then ask the boy how he'd like to have that kind of a hole blown through him- self or through his playmate. Keep this up until the boy is entirely serious and respectful in his at- 238 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT titude towards the weapon he is to use. Do not let him touch the gun by himself for some time. Explain to him that it is to be used only to kill something. Teach him that at all other times the gun must be empty empty in the house or tent, empty in the wagon, empty in the boat, all the time and not part of the time, when not on the actual firing line. Ex- plain broadly the mechanism of the gun to the boy, and show him the safety device on a hammerless gun, but teach him that no safety device leaves a gun safe. It is not safe even when empty. It is never safe so long as it points towards himself or towards any- one else. This habit of belief will establish the habit of automatic carefulness in the carrying of the shot- gun. A boy can first begin to handle a gun in the house, of course entirely empty, until he becomes familiar with the handling and feel of it, but he should not at first be allowed alone with the gun. At all times he should be taught to respect a gun as something more than a gun, to regard it as a weapon and not as a toy, and hence as a part of himself. It was one of the worst of discourtesies in the early Western days even to touch another man's six-shooter, and very many men never allowed even a friend's hand on their revolvers. Most fathers give the boy a single-barrel gun to 239 OUT OF DOORS begin with. That is not good practice, especially in this day when so many light double guns can be had. It is best to get a double barrel, bored rather open, not choke-bored for trap-shooting, and near the stan- dard gauge. A sixteen is small enough for a boy to learn to use. There are fine small-gauge guns made today, but they handicap one who is just learning the art of shooting. Today you can get a twelve-gauge, American-made, as low as six and three-fourth pounds weight. If the boy is not big enough to handle that weight, he is hardly old enough to shoot. Also, a delay of a year or so will make him better able to stand the recoil of a gun. He should be started in with light loads, however, so that he may not get the habit of flinching. An ounce of shot will do, and say two and a half drams of powder. The pupil will be more encouraged if he has some record of hitting something, so in the first lessons it is quite as well to use number eight rather than number six. Some parents begin by throwing up bottles for the young marksman to shoot at. This makes a difficult object to hit, and its flight does not resemble that of a bird. It is much better to begin shooting at a sta- tionary target until the boy has been drilled in the rudiments of good form in handling a gun. Moreover, as great care should be taken in fitting the boy's gun- stock as the father takes with his own. Some men 240 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT experiment with gunstocks all their lives, but think anything is good enough for the beginner. The op- posite is true. The boy should be taken to an expert salesman or gunsmith, and fitted with his gun as accurately as a man is fitted. There ought to be some weeks, months or seasons, however, expended on the boy before he is allowed to shoot at all. Let him carry his gun empty for a time, even walking afield with his parent or others. If he is found pointing his gun at himself or anyone else, even when the gun is empty, take it away from him and do not let him have it for a week. Don't mince matters, and be stern about it, letting him learn that it is dis- cipline and not persuasion with which he has to do, because he is beginning to learn to use a dangerous weapon. If he is detected crawling through a fence and pulling the gun toward him muzzle first, take it away from him and send him home in disgrace. Teach him to "break" his gun, loaded or empty, when he is standing near others, or crossing a fence. If he forgets this, take his gun away from him. He will soon get the right habit. When you are absolutely sure that the boy has learned and learned permanently the first great lesson of the shotgun that it is not a fault but a crime to jeopardize his own life or that of another you may begin to let the boy shoot with you, never alone. Get 241 OUT OF DOORS a good clear range where you will not be disturbed, and go out alone with the boy. Tack up a big sheet of paper with a big bull's-eye at a distance of twenty- five or thirty yards. Let the first practice be with the empty gun. Have the boy bring up the gun promptly, with both eyes wide open, and try to cover the bull's-eye with the one motion, so that the muzzle shall point at the bull's-eye just as the stock strikes the shoulder. Then let him snap the hammers, prefer- ably on empty shells. Keep this up some time. Don't let the boy poke or potter, but let him be impressed with the necessity of covering his object with the first impulse of the gun against the shoulder. He must not be allowed time to poke around and aim, but must learn the value of the prompt and smooth pitching up of the gun. Next let the student stand with his eyes fixed on the bull's-eye, then close the eyes, both of them, and pitch up the gun, trying to cover the bull's-eye as before. When he has taken aim thus blindfolded, so to speak, let him keep the gun in the position where it was pitched up, and then open his eyes, and sight down the barrel, so that he can see how close his aim has been. Considerable practice at this is good either for a boy or a man, and it will disclose whether the gun- stock fits or not. It will not hurt to let off a load of powder once or twice, with no shot, mixing a few of 242 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT these in with the empty shells in the gun, so that he will not know when to expect them. He must not flinch, and he must learn to pitch the gun smoothly. If at any time in this work the pupil becomes excited and careless, take the gun away from him for a week. Have no foolishness about it, and be as stern as you like even more stern than you like, perhaps. It is discipline and not sport which the boy is learning now. When you think that your pupil has mastered these elemental things and he cannot do that in his first season you may begin with loaded cartridges, prac- ticing on the sheet of paper, and with loads which will not jar the tender shoulder of the pupil. If his gun fits him, and if it be not bored too close, he will be apt to hit his target frequently ev?n with both eyes shut. Then let him begin with both eyes open not closing the left eye, but shooting with head fairly high and both eyes on the target. Then let him trace out for himself where the center of the load hit, realizing that the center ought to land on the bull's-eye. But teach him that speed and promptness of aim and fire are at this time more important for him than hitting the bull's-eye. He is now learning good form, good habits, in the actual use of the gun. Accuracy will come from greater practice. By the time your son is ten or twelve years of age, he may if you like, be very 243 OUT OF DOORS well grounded in these simple fundamentals which have so much to do with his field style later on. Relatively few American boys even have this much training in the art of wing-shooting. They pick it up by themselves, after a time learning enough so that they begin to shoot at traps, where their education with the shotgun is finished, without much reference as to their actual education in the art of field-shoot- ing; in which courtesy, etiquette and carefulness are as important as actual skill in killing things. In some shooting schools there are moving targets, rabbits or other animals, which run along a wire, and the boy is next taught to shoot at these, it being shown to him how necessary it is to hold well ahead, and to swing with the moving object, always without stop- ping the gun in the least when the trigger is pulled. The thing we are trying to teach him is the mental focus, the concentration of purpose, under which he throws up the gun promptly, loosing it off quickly the instant he knows he is in the right place, and almost unconscious that there is any trigger on the gun at all. These moving targets are excellent for a beginner, but since they are not often obtainable in this country, the boy can do very well at tin cans thrown, not in the air, but rolling and bounding along the ground, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards from the shooter. The next thing after the useful tin can is the cot- 244 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT ton-tail rabbit. Then there are certain slow-flying birds which will do for a little practice. No boy should be allowed to break the game laws, however, and he should not be allowed to shoot song birds at any time. When you catch him doing that, take his gun away from him for a month. In all this shooting, the boy is very apt to have most prominently in mind the desire to kill something, to hit his object, and so will be disposed to poke and aim, and so shoot behind. Teach him that speed of aim and accuracy of aim go together, and above all teach him that he cannot stop his gun when he pulls the trigger and expect to hit anything. It will be a proud day for the boy, very likely, when you allow him to go afield with you for your first hunt together a proud day for you as well. This ought to be not earlier than his second season of familiarity with the gun. It is best to have not more than your- self and the boy when you go out in the field. You must teach him now the etiquette of the gun, as pre- cisely and severely as you have taught him the eti- quette of table manners. He will now have ad- vanced beyond the merely disciplinary part of his education, in which you have been drill sergeant only, and not parent. Speak to him kindly now, let him understand that he is not out merely for a lark, but for a part of his education. Teach him if you can 245 OUT OF DOORS the value as a gentlemanly accomplishment of skill with weapons, and let him learn if he can that, al- though in using weapons he will kill something, the mere wish to kill something is by no means the only motive or purpose of the gentleman or the sportsman. By this time the boy will be anxious to learn the correct way of handling his gun. See that you are a good example for him, and let him go out only with yourself or someone who is a good example. If he is walking beside you, teach him to carry his gun over the crook of his arm, pointing the other way. If he puts the gun on his shoulder, teach him never to swing it as he turns so that it will point toward anyone. If he is behind you in going through brush, be sure that he carries his gun with the muzzle back. If he is ahead of you, see that he carries his gun muzzle forward. Train him especially in getting over fences. Teach him always to set his gun on the safety, or let down the hammers, and put it through the fence ahead of himself, later climbing the fence at one side of the gun, and never pulling the gun through the fence toward himself. Of course when the young shooter finds himself in average company, he will meet many men who have never been trained as carefully as himself. In that case he should not cease in his own proper habits, but he need not be ostentatious in his own gun drill, whatever others are. Simplicity 246 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT and courtesy are as useful here as every place else in life. Any man or any boy, however, is entirely within his rights in reprimanding any person who points a gun at him accidentally or with intent or in jest. This is no jest. No one should point a gun except with the intent to kill with it, and to kill at once. It is not a discourtesy but worse than that, to be careless in the handling of a gun. The boy will see many men standing about leaning on their guns with their hands over the muzzle. He need not chide a man for this, but he need not do so himself, and he ought not to shoot in the field with a man whom he has found to be careless in the handling of his gun. Many and many a time every one of us, when out shooting in the country, has found himself one of a chance medley party of all sorts of persons with all sorts of guns, who "ring in" on the shoot, in a per- fectly friendly but often perfectly horrible way. At the risk of being thought rude, select your own com- pany, and only those whom you know to be care- ful and gentlemanly. Especially select this sort of company for your boy, and let him start right, with some kindly and careful older companion who will see that he has a chance. The old-time prairie chicken used to be a splendid thing for the young marksmen, the next thing after the cotton-tail rabbit. Our quail are a little more 247 OUT OF DOORS difficult, but are apt to be pretty much the only game the average boy is likely to see. Perhaps the first bird the boy kills flying may be a snipe, a plover, some shore bird, a prairie grouse, or even a quail. He is a made boy from that time on, and the love of the art is thenceforward fixed for him. But teach him to temper his enthusiasm with care and dignity, and do not let his excitement render him careless with his gun. When you come to the wagon see that he takes out his shells. If you shoot in the same duck blind, teach him that he must never shoot over the head of a companion, or close to the ear of a companion. Teach him also the courtesy of the field to shoot the birds which come on his own side, and never to be eager to claim a bird on which perhaps two men have doubled. It is hard for a boy to give up a bird if he sees it fall ahead of his gun, but he has gone a step towards being a gentleman when he can toss the bird to the other fellow and say, "Your bird, sir." If it is your purpose to teach your son to be a gentleman and a sportsman, and not merely a game butcher, you will teach him that shooting birds on the water or on the ground requires no skill and is not good form. Teach him to pick out his bird in a covey rise, and not merely to shoot at the flock. Teach him, by precept and example, not to break the game laws and not to kill too much. In all this you will be 248 YOUR GUN: HOW TO HANDLE IT teaching him the great laws of conservation and of fair play. To that extent you are grounding him in good citizenship, and starting him in as a man who is apt to be just, careful and fair in business and social relations. The world likes that sort of man in busi- ness or society, and there are few places where a boy can learn better principles of life than in the field with a companion who in himself represents good traditions in the matter of skill and etiquette afield. Time was when the term gentleman and sportsman ment much the same. They have not yet lost their flavor, these two titles. The first use of a gun by a boy is a time justly held in some dread by the boy's parents. Careful tuition in this part of the boy's education, however, removes the danger and puts him in the way of a knowledge which may prove of very lasting value in character making. Self-reliance and dignity are only two of the things which you will find your boy taking on when he begins to use his first shotgun as a young gentleman should use it. XII YOUR CAMPFIRE: HOW TO USE IT XII YOUR CAMPFIRE: HOW TO USE IT THE same as yourself, when I was a boy there were two questions that not even my Sunday-school teacher was able to answer to my satisfaction. One was: What holds the stars up? The other was: Where does fire come from? It is not absolutely sure to me, even yet, that any- body ever has answered those questions lucidly and comprehensively so many answers being just differ- ent ways of looking at questions. Which of us does not recall lying awake at night and looking up at the stars and wondering why they did not fall down? They do sometimes, as any boy can tell; but why not all the time? Sir Isaac Newton propounded a certain theory about it ; but it is like the critic's comment on the heroine in a novel she is not convincing. Not even my college professor could ever put the law of gravitation across with me. It is thin stuff. But, anyhow, the stars are fine to look at. Then again, that question of the fire. How many times have we all asked mother what made the match 253 OUT OF DOORS light when you struck it? And where did the flame of the candle go when you blew it out? And if it was hot before it went out, why did it not stay hot where it went? And where did it go anyhow? The dear lady never could get those questions an- swered to suit us at all. Has this ever been plain to you? If you have got that and the question about the stars settled so that you understand them clearly you are some wise. There is something mutual between the stars and the campfire that seems plain. The campfire at night under the stars who has not studied in that school and found out that perhaps answers are not so im- portant in life as just questions? Certainly life in the open would be robbed of all charm were it not for the stars and the fire. Where did the first fire come from ? Who made it ? How was it discovered ? Interesting books have been written on those questions; and some of them have paid fair royalties though under false pretenses. The only thing certain is that a first campfire was made; and without the campfire there would be no sport, no geography and no history. Books have been writen about the campfire itself how to make it and use it proof that man is drifting away from that day and age in the world when every man knew how to build a fire. We face the time when 254 YOUR CAMPFIRE the only man able to build a fire will be the janitor and he will belong to a union and be liable to walk out any minute. In the old days father used to get up before the other members of the family did he not? and build the fire in the kitchen stove, summer or winter. He always built the first fire in the kitchen stove, because that was where the early operations of the day began. He went out into the kitchen without much on but a pair of carpet slippers; and what he did in a climate where perhaps the thermometer was far below zero and the kitchen floor well covered with snow that had blown in under the kitchen door was some- thing direct, simple and highly efficient. You can gamble father did not make any false motions about that fire. He had been building it for sixty years and knew how. Besides, it was cold. The preparations for these matutinal pyrotechnics were made on the evening previous. Before he went to bed, father went out into the kitchen and got his kindling-wood ready for the next morning. He had a trusty hatchet sacred to the purpose of splitting kin- dling, and with the said hatchet he would reduce cer- tain pine boards to inflammable sizes. The day of the ten-cent bundle of kindling wood, with resin on the end the sort you buy at a delicatessen store had 255 OUT OF DOORS not yet dawned in American family life, and in those days people did things for themselves. After father had split his own kindling-wood, the last thing he did was to take a straight pine stick ; and with the trusty pocketknife which at that time made part of every householder's personal equipment, for all householders then chewed tobacco instead of smok- ing cigarettes raise along the edge of this stick a series of undetached shavings, which stood out fan- like from the parent stem, fine and thin at the free ends. This stick was the essential ingredient of the next morning's fire. It is very much worth remem- bering as a historical institution in American folk- lore. The next morning, rising in his whiskers and carpet slippers, father would pass through the "settin' " room, "dinin' " room and pantry to the kitchen. There he would make a pass or so with the poker to free the grate of ashes, take off the stove-lid and insert his prepared shaving-stick in such fashion that the free edges of the shavings would just protrude through the firegrate. Over this he would place small sticks, then larger sticks, then dry stovewood; and then other stove- wood or maybe soft coal. After that he would re- place the stove-lid. Then he would open the two little doors in front of the stove above the hearth, or cast- 256 YOUR CAMPFIRE iron apron, which is in front of all good cook-stoves. Probably you do not know what this sort of hearth is, since you mostly have read about hearths in books that have Yuletide written on them in gold letters, and that cost anywhere from ten cents to a dollar-forty, according to the value you place on the folks you send them to. A real, true, honest-to-goodness hearth is made of cast-iron and is situated east of the cook-stove and south of the two little doors aforesaid. Well, anyhow, when those two little doors were pushed open father saw the edge of his shaving-stick protruding between the bars of the firegrate not the sort of shaving-stick you use, but the one he had made the night before. Whereupon he scratched a match somewhere and touched off the shavings, drawing the little doors a trifle closer together and fixing the damper in the back part of the stove so she would draw well. After this father went back to the sit- ting-room, shook down the baseburner, put in another hod of coal, and went back to bed to get warm. About this time you could hear sister begin to move round upstairs, where there was no fire, about as swift as a grasshopper in the dew. Then sister would stroll congealedly down and put some more wood on the kitchen fire and get the crock out from behind the cook stove, where it had been wrapped up over night, and start in to getting the cakes ready What? 257 OUT OF DOORS Afterward, when the baseburner was beginning to get red round the middle, buddy also, son would get up and before long all would meet in the sitting- room for family prayers. We needed them? Maybe. But then, as compared to the be-janitored flat of to- day, I am not so sure. Still, you can find the same stars and, for that mat- ter, can use the same old kindling stick in making a fire for yourself out of doors ; in fact you will find it extremely useful in building a campfire which is just what we started to remark a while back. Now, to use again the same phrase you did in your first composition, there are a great many kinds of campfires too numerous to mention. Bad as some of them are from a technical standpoint, none of them is anything but good from a human standpoint. Most of them are built by amateurs, and this is eminently fitting. The bigoted old-timer, who knows it all and insists that his way is the only good way, is of all beings the most intolerable. The amateur needs but little of his lore, but would best figure out for himself. what he wants to do and how to do it which is the practical and usual way in human life. One good rule is advanced by most authorities and that is not to build a campfire too large. A small campfire is warmer, safer, more convenient and more 258 YOUR CAMPFIRE comfortable. Of course your fire must be larger than that of the old cook stove, unless you have contrived some retaining walls to hold in its heat. A big camp- fire takes too much wood, is too apt to set the tent on fire, even if it does not set the woods on fire ; and it is hard to put out when you leave. It will make you uncomfortable when you cook at it and it will burn the grub. Still, you will probably build your own campfire just as large as you like. Pax vobiscum! It is much better than not to build it at all. Different campfires are used for different purposes. Suppose you were traveling fast through a country, making one-night stands and cooking four meals a day. That requires one sort of fire. A permanent camp, where there is plenty of wood, asks for a dif- ferent sort. Deep snow requires yet another kind a pleasant summer site still another. A score of things may affect the fashion of your campfire, and it is your own part to make each fire in workmanlike fashion, adjusted to the needs of the hour. A very common rule laid down by makers of helps on outdoor sports is that the campfire should be laid between two small green logs, each four or five feet long, hewn flat on one side, and placed six inches apart or maybe sixteen inches ; I forget which. That is all very well if you have plenty of time to make your fire. 259 OUT OF DOORS An Indian lives out of doors all his life, but he never builds a campfire that way. Neither can you build a campfire that an Indian will not take apart and make over again to suit his own notion. Some of these notions are gpod ones and are accepted by white men that live in Indian countries. Suppose you are traveling with a party of Indians or breeds, with a pack train or canoe, in some North- ern wilderness country. You will not see any of these nice little side logs cut at all. Perhaps, also, you will revise your idea as to the assertion that the Indian always builds a small fire. Sometimes he does be- cause he is lazy. Sometimes he does not because he can save time by not doing so. In fast traveling, forty minutes is about all the time allowed to unpack, make a fire, cook a meal, wash the dishes, repack, smoke a pipe, and hit the trail again. Your half-breed usually makes one of these kettle fires out of poles long ones, dry ones; such as he can find already drying on the ground. He puts these poles together not in cobhouse fashion and not in a loose heap, but in a long pile, side by side. He will provide as kindling certain dry twigs, if there are any. Sometimes he will use birchbark, but most often you will find him whittling up a row of semi- detached shavings on the side of a stick. This is pre- cisely father's old kindling-stick. No one knows who 260 YOUR CAMPFIRE first discovered it, but it is worth remembering by any- one who needs to start a fire out of doors. When Pierre has raised some shavings on the edge of his stick, he stands it upside down under his pole pile and throws some loose, dry kindling over it perhaps sheltering it all with his hat if it is raining. Then he touches a match to the lower edge of his shavings and by and by they set fire to the solid stick, and that sets fire to the twigs, which in turn touch off the whole works. And this fire, begun at the center of the log or pole heap, spreads both ways. There are no side logs, because there has been no time to get them it would be considered finicky to use them; but as the poles burn in a bright flame Pierre hangs his tea-kettle in the flame, dependent from the end of a slant stick, the butt of which he has stuck into the ground the tea-stick or 'quorgan stick of the Northern woods. He does not usually set the tea-kettle down on the poles; but perhaps he can find a place where two of them will hold a frying-pan. And at the other end of his long fire he will hang the stew-kettle, which was not cleaned out after the last meal an affair of squirrel, rabbit, duck, partridge, rice, potatoes, onions, or anything else that happens to be in camp. A good stew-pot may begin at the first of a month and still be going thirty days later, additions being made from meal to meal. 261 OUT OF DOORS Besides these three utensils, there may or may not be another in which to boil dish water. If so there will be room for all on this long fire, which has been kicked together with no loss of time at all. The Indian's idea of a long, narrow fire is a good one. It is only the rank tenderfoot who builds a cir- cular fire, made by heaping the firewood up in the cen- ter so that the flames run entirely about. You cannot get near to that kind of fire, which is wasteful of heat and room alike. So a general rule regarding your campfire is to make it long and narrow. An Indian does not usually build a big campfire to last through the night, unless the weather is very cold. He will have far less bed covering than a white man and in a single blanket will sleep out in weather where a white man would perish in four times as much bed- covering. A campfire really has two purposes it may be used for cooking or for warmth, or for both. If you cook in kettles or pots you can use the direct flame. If you are frying or broiling you want to cook over the coals and not over the flames. There are all sorts of fads and poses in sport, as in everything else. Some of us like to affect the D. Boone and S. Kenton simplicity stunt and scorn to use anything modern. As a matter of fact, you can- not very well beat a Dutch oven as a camp utensil, but 262 YOUR CAMPFIRE at the same time, an aluminum reflector is much lighter and will cook just as good biscuits. Also, a little folding grid, with legs that you can drive down into the ground, is something that weighs very little and is very useful in steadying a coffee-pot or holding a broiler. Drive them right down over your bed of coals, so that the top will be only four or five inches above the ground. It will be handy to set things on; and if you do not try to use too much fire it will make a very comfortable broiler. Neither, as I have often said, need you despise the long, wooden-handled fork of commerce, or a patent handle for your frying-pan one into which you can drive a long pole, so that you may sit off from the fire and cook without burning your hands if you do not abjure all handles and stick to the old-timer's pliers. Here is where your gloves come in handy. Of course these things will sound effete to some, and to yet others not sufficiently effete. The latter will want to rig a stove-top or a vast gridiron made of steel bars laid across the two side logs, as recom- mended by the textbooks. If you are actually in the wilderness your fare will be rough and it will be condensed such stuff as beans, dried fruits, and the like. It takes time to cook beans. An iron pot is best ; but you can do very well with a tin vessel if you have nothing better. 263 OUT OF DOORS Before you build your long-pole fire take the butt of the ax and knock out a trench, over which the fire may afterward be built. It will IT i with coals gradu- ally, and after you have finished the meal you may set the bean-pot down in this trench, and cover it with ashes and coals and let it cook over night shifting your campfire to some other point if it must burn all night. Suppose you are fairly modern and fairly well equipped, that you want to have a quiet time in camp in the woods, and that you are out in the fall when the nights are cool, though there is no snow as yet. Your first thought is a wall tent and a sheet-iron stove. Men can winter in these conditions, but it would be hard to devise anything more uncomfortable or more unhealthy. You will be more comfortable if your tent is open in front, so that you may get the light and heat of a good campfire. It will be all the better if your tent has a back so arranged that it will reflect the heat down. The open- face camp or shanty or lean-to looks like all out-of- doors, but it is quite comfortable if your campfire is made correctly and kept up adequately. I proved this not long ago in the wintertime, in one of the Southern states, under circumstances which convinced all the neighborhood that I was crazy and which convinced me, on the other hand, that every- 264 YOUR CAMPFIRE body else was crazy who was not privileged to sleep in precisely the same way. It came about that a hospitable planter insisted on sending down a couple of negro boys to do the camp work. These boys pitched the tent, secured abundant hay for a bed, and provided an excellent woodpile of sound oak timber eighteen inches in diameter likewise other oak, hickory and divers priceless ma- terials of like sort, wherewith to light the altar fire. I slept alone a few nights thus the fire in front, the same old stars above. It was warm in my tent. I do not know just how it was in the shelter where the negro boys lay huddled in their cotton quilts, but it was fine, along toward morning, when the dawn was becoming gray and the fire had burned low, just to follow the advice of the old planter: "Lie still and holler for the colored population !" I have never found a scheme that beat this, though it is not in the textbooks. It was a trifle hard on the youngsters, but they were used to it anyhow; so they would get up, build up the fire, cook a very decent breakfast of broiled quail and bacon, with a good cup of coffee and then stand round, afraid to wake the boss up for breakfast. Can you beat that for a camp- fire ? You cannot ! XIII GETTING LOST AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT XIII GETTING LOST AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT A PARTY of deer-hunters, encamped last fall in an upper Wisconsin county, one after- noon met a wild man, who hurried from the forest and threw himself face down upon the railroad track near where they stood. Approaching, they found he was not intoxicated, but lost. He was wholly ex- hausted and almost insane. His clothing, which had been wet to the waist, was frozen about him. He was the picture of a lost man so confused he barely could answer questions. "I'm all in, boys!" was his first lucid remark. "Where am I?" They told him he was not far from Roswell, a near-by railroad station. "And I came from up the Bluebill Branch, thirty miles away!" said he after a time. "What time is it?" They told him it was three o'clock. "This must be my second day," said he. "I know I walked all night. I walked into a lake somewhere and got wet, and spoiled my matches so I couldn't start a fire. I left 269 OUT OF DOORS camp at seven o'clock in the morning and was lost an hour after that ; and I've walked ever since. I've been out either one night or two nights I don't know which; and God knows how many miles I've gone! I'm all in!" He had been out only one night, but during that time and the two days of his travel he had covered fifty miles or more on foot in the tangled forest and briile. He had come south between two parallel rail- road lines, either of which he could easily have reached by a few hours' walk. Had he gone north, beyond the terminal of the railway on the west, he would never have been heard of again. His was a typical case of getting lost and having good luck in getting found. Evidently he had first lost his bearings when not more than a mile or two from camp. This man was young and strong, else he could not have survived the hardships of his journey. He was a stranger in that country. Yet only a year or so ago, not far from that same place, an old woodsman a native got lost and turned up at Crystal Falls, thirty miles or more out of the way, and unable to tell how he got there. Again, not so far from that same coun- try, a tenderfoot was lost for two days and nights. He was trailed by good woodsmen over all sorts of country. At last the trail stopped at a log, where the man had sat down exhausted. He had fallen over 270 GETTING LOST backward and lay there dead, a victim of his own panic. He literally had run himself to death. There is special danger for city men or middle-aged men who get lost and are seized by panic. Nearly always toward nightfall a man not in thoroughly good physical condition is apt to get chilly. Now give him a panic in the dark, and let him run and fall and perspire, and pant and run some more, and he is ready to chill and die without much further preparation, if the weather is very cold. Each year in the deer-hunting country men are re- ported missing. Some of them are killed and some of them are lost. Hardly any party of strangers goes into the wilderness country without knowing a lost- man scare. The man who has been lost and who has later stumbled on the right way is apt to be ashamed to tell of his experience. Sometimes he will see some familiar landmark or some road he recognizes. More often he runs across some other hunter. In a deer-hunt last fall I met a man who said he was once lost when a boy on his father's Michigan farm. He had gone into the bush to drive up the family cow and in some way got turned round. In a strange, inverted sort of world he must have walked past his own home, past some big trees that were prominent on the roadway, and up to the house of a neighbor two miles away. Here, in a country with 271 OUT OF DOORS which he was personally familiar all his life, he asked where his own father's farm was and was shown. On the way home down the road, in some way the points of the compass whirled about, all the world straight- ened before him, and he knew where he was ! This sort of experience is not unprecedented by any means. There formerly hunted in upper Wisconsin a man who always got lost when he left camp. One evening he did not show up and the others were sit- ting about the fire waiting and talking. All at once a wild figure broke open the door and sprang into the middle of the room. "Where am I?" he shrieked. "Where am I ?" It was the lost man in such a panic that he did not know his own friends or his own camp! This is an actual instance, and shows very clearly into what state of mind the lost man may get himself. There is a great difference among men in the ability to travel safely in wild country. There was hunting in this same region this fall an oldish gentleman who also always is lost as soon as he is out of sight of camp. When found by a stranger he was sitting on a stump, placidly smoking and admitting that he did not know where he was. "I never do, for that matter," said he. "I make the boys walk many an extra mile, I suppose ; but I like the woods so well they always let me go along again. Someone will come along and find me 272 GETTING LOST after a while; and meantime it's me for this stump." This same man once got within fifty rods of camp and was sitting down wondering where he was when he met the search party starting out to find him. The last was one of the incurable cases, but even good woodsmen and guides can and do get lost in broken country where the landmarks cannot be seen. One of our party, a fine woodsman and a powerful man, was lost the best part of one afternoon while his guide and friend waited at the rendezvous, where the horses of the three had been tied on a logging grade. His case was easy to explain. We all thought the logging road crossed the swamp where we were hunting, but it stopped short within half a mile. The hunter, who started in at the south side of the trail, at length swung north to find the logging grade. He did not find it, for the good reason that it was not there, and so passed on deep into the worst swamp of the entire country. He struck a creek that he reasoned must head in a marsh to the west, but the going was unspeakably hard and darkness at length approached. He had not the slightest idea where his friends and the horses were at that time. He was just preparing to stop and build a fire when he heard a rifle-shot, which he supposed was fired by his friends, though really by someone else. He answered, and we sup- posed the shot came from our friend. So we started 273 OUT OF DOORS signaling by rifle-fire and at last got him out. It was then dark, and we rode five miles to camp, all getting lost twice in that process. We had a fine opportunity to see how different a country looks after darkness has changed all its contours and wiped out all its landmarks. Now this man was not really lost at all. Within a couple of miles he knew where he was, though much confused by the bog holes and thickets of the swamp. He had hunted the country for years and knew per- fectly the direction in which camp lay. Simply he had got into a country on which he had not planned. Supposing that he could find the horses without diffi- culty, he had left his coat and lunchbag on his saddle. He had no ax, but did have matches and a compass. Best of all, he had his wits about him; and, being a powerful chap, he would have passed the night with^ out serious hardship. Of course had he blundered out at the head of the creek before dark he would have seen the trail to an old logging camp and would have known where he was. He had merely forgotten one of the rigid camp rules and failed to start home at half past two or three in the afternoon. What should his friends do in a case like that? Had we not found him we should have waited until dark, built a fire, and fired rifle-signals. In a country where there is much rifle-fire going on no signaling is 274 GETTING LOST of value until after clarlc. Had we got no answer we should have taken his horse, knowing that it would kill itself trying to break loose if left alone, and all of us would have ridden to camp to organize a larger search party. We should have built a beacon fire on a tall hill according to a camp agreement. Had the large party not found him that night the swamp would have been surrounded the next day and he would have been picked up without fail. He was obeying another strict camp rule, which is that if a man is lost he must stop and build a fire, and wait until he is found. That is all he safely can do. Every country has its own rules and conditions. Sometimes there are few trails that are unsafe to take and follow out; and, again, an unknown trail is risky to follow. A slashed-off country, full of old logging grades leading nowhere in particular, is one of the most troublesome to hunt over. Such a country some- times is broken by countless choppy hills and hollows, covered with bride and second growth. Such a region at night is practically impassable. Virgin forest with few trails is an easier hunting-ground. What ought one to do if he goes, say, on a deer- hunt into wild country ? Naturally he will have guides or friends, but he ought not to depend on these too much, else he will never learn to hunt alone; nor, on the other hand, should he be too keen about starting 275 OUT OF DOORS out alone at first. He ought, first, to get the large map features of the country in his mind to know where the nearest railroad line or the nearest large river is to be found, or some prominent road leading to a town or camp. If possible he ought to have a map made of the locality, showing landmarks or spots easily recognized. Especially ought he to get in his mind some landmark near the camp. When going out from camp he ought to turn round and look back, remembering that it is this reverse of the country he will see when he is coming home in the evening. For instance, near our camp last fall there was a hardwood ridge cut into a knife-like edge, which ran down to a notch in the skyline of other timber-growth. In this notch lay our camp on the shore of a lake, and over the notch could be seen the tops of a few pines, the only ones thereabout one pine with a forked top. That notch was an excellent landmark, even in the dusk. A better one for long range existed in three forty-acre tracts of tall green pine, the only uncut pine for miles about. This timber lay two miles north of camp. The use of these two landmarks would give any intelligent hunter a north -and-south baseline of more than three miles; so that, after learning which were camp-trails and which were abandoned logging roads, he could feel pretty safe at least in clear weather. A lake, a long valley, a tall mountain peak, 276 GETTING LOST will serve equally well in a country of bolder topog- raphy. Yet the hunter, excitedly following a deer-trail, is often led into the most dangerous part of his sport that of passing landmarks without noting them. At this same camp a deer-hunter of thirty years' stand- ing passed entirely to the west of the green timber above mentioned, crossed the only road on which there was any steel, and wandered on to the west and north. Suddenly he heard a locomotive whistle back of him, when he knew it ought to be west of him. He had no recollection whatever of passing the railroad track that had been established as a deadline for him ! Hap- pily about this time an Indian came by who was will- ing, for a five-dollar bill, to show him the way home by a short cut. This man was heading straight north toward Lake Superior, entirely out of his hunting country; and yet he was an old hunter, fully ac- quainted for miles about. So much for trailing a deer too closely. It is apparent to any one that one good landmark is worth a dozen compasses so long as one can see the landmark. The man who becomes confused and wan- ders about vaguely is living in a world entirely strange to him. His subconscious mind has control of him, and not his conscious, reasoning mind. When by accident he catches sight of a familiar landmark in- 277 OUT OF DOORS stant correlation of his two minds takes place. The world swings entirely about and falls into its ancient order. The compass rarely will do so much for him; yet the compass is the only reliance in storm, dark- ness or fog. Any man who goes into the wild regions ought to know how to use a compass. A study of it will intro- duce him to the psychology of getting lost. The truth is that we are made up largely of a subconscious sur- vival a bundle of doubts, fears, superstitions and ter- rors handed down to us from the Stone Age. Given certain conditions, we dread the dark; we anticipate dinosaurs and dragons; we cry aloud before the saber- toothed tiger. The subconscious mind governs us. We are indeed as a reed shaken with the wind. What will serve to restore the control of reason in such a case as this? In our deer-camp above men- tioned all these questions were well discussed by many men experienced in the woods. "One compass is of no use," said one gentleman. "For that reason I always carry two." At once all eyes were turned on him, for here indeed was an idea. He went on to explain : "I know of this being tried," said he. "When a man has the panic of being lost fully upon him he never believes his compass; but when he takes out his second compass and sees it pointing just the way his first one does, somehow 278 GETTING LOST his reason gets a sudden jolt and he concludes that the majority must be right. That starts him to rea- soning again, and then he is usually safe." I consider that chance advice to be the safest I have ever heard for the man who is in danger of get- ting lost. Take two compasses ! You are sure to be- lieve both, though you might believe neither but for the other. Of course a compass cannot take you home unless you know in what direction home lies. Hence you must have a map, either in your pocket or in your mind ; and you must know where you are on that map. The general lay of the country must be fixed mentally. Of course the average hunter knows enough to hunt out some eminence from which he can look for a familiar landmark, such as a valley, peak, motte or irregular feature of the skyline. At night the com- pass must be followed implicitly if one is to travel at all. The stars are not of much use in timber country where the going is difficult and where the course is often changed. I have traveled on the plains fifty miles at night by using the stars, and lesser distances on the prairies. In both of these countries all the con- tours are changed by darkness ; but sometimes the go- ing is good, so that a starline can be held. If you have a good compass you do not need to look at the sun, or attempt the foolish process of find- 279 OUT OF DOORS ing the north by looking for the heaviest moss on tree- trunks. Suppose there is no moss or suppose there are no treetrunks or even suppose there are both you are not much better off. In most of Michigan and Wisconsin the hemlock tips point northeast; but suppose you have no hemlock ! You can find north by the use of your watch in the sun, or by the use of a pencil point and the reflection on your thumbnail if there is no sun ; but it is a great deal simpler to find north by a good compass, and you never ought to go into the woods without one. And you should remem- ber that the compass without a map, in either your pocket or your mind, is worthless. Never hunt in any strange country without knowing the big trails and the big streams and the big valleys. Locate your camp by some very prominent landmark. If you do get lost, which may happen very quickly even to a good man, remember the psychology of get- ting lost, and try to let the reasoning, civilized man overcome the terrified cave man. There are no dino- saurs today. Sit down and think it over. Light a pipe if you smoke. Build a fire in any case. Look at your compass and then think of something else. If it is nearly dark and you must lie out, do not wait too long. Darkness comes at four o'clock in winter and it becomes light at six the next morning and it takes a lot of wood to burn fourteen or sixteen hours. Get 280 GETTING LOST behind some windbreak and have plenty of heavy wood for your fire. You can build two smaller fires, and so keep warm on both sides. If it is bitter cold you should not sleep very much, but remain sitting up. Always have some wood close at hand to throw on the fire should you wake up chilled and shivering. Don't eat snow, and drink hot water rather than cold if you have any way of boiling it. If it is very cold build a fire ; then rake it away and lie on the warmed ground. Do not brood or think, but keep busy. Whistle once in a while. If you have two compasses look at both of them. When in doubt get some more wood, for it certainly will take a lot. Deer-hunters are more apt to get lost than anyone else, as they go into wilder country. In the fall one wears rather heavy clothing, and the temptation is to cut down all else as light as possible. These things, however, you ought to have with you if you are in a strange country : two compasses not one ; two match- boxes, one absolutely water-proof and held in reserve; an axe with a good edge; a knife with a good, strong blade; a lunch of some sort or, better still, some prunes or raisins and cakes of chocolate. This equipment will do you no good if you do not keep it on your person; so, though it may make you seem a marked man in a party of old hunters who are familiar with the country, it is just as well to stick to 281 OUT OF DOORS the full outfit. Then if you are caught out at night you can make yourself pretty comfortable. The man who has lain out overnight, and who is found comfortable and in possession of his self-con- trol the next day by his friends, is usually looked on with respect rather than ridicule. If that same man, however, goes crazy and starts what may be a march of death, driven blindly through the wilderness ahead of his own ancient superstitions, he is apt to lose a certain part of his own self-respect. He will always fear again that panic-stricken man hidden within his own soul. When first you feel the panic, therefore, pull your- self together strongly. Do all you can to whip that subconscious man. Light your fire and your pipe, whistle, and make up some story to tell your grand- children about the bogyman who stalks abroad at night and the banshee that howls dismally aloft among the pines; but, for yourself, do not believe in the saber-toothed tiger, the dinosaur, the bogyman or the banshee. They belong to that dangerous subcon- scious mind that is the source of so many of our evils. Shorn of these, a night alone in the wilderness is a wonderful and valuable experience. It gives a fellow time to think of a lot of things of which few fellows stop to think. XIV THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION XIV THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION WERE three Crees, hight Napisusis, Piu, and Chuck-gun, and these three with heathen fervor hated a certain other member of their tribe, whom all suspected of witch- craft the Weestigo, they called him. Now a Weesti- go is either a medicine man or a fakir, or a wizard or a cannibal, or all of these things, as the case may be. Had the Crees been negroes, they would have accused the Weestigo of putting a spell on them. Had they been western white men, it might have been said that the Weestigo had them buffaloed. Certainly the Weestigo lived in personal comfort and without much work, because he had all the hunters of the band afraid of him so afraid that after a time they did not dare go out to run their traps, lest the Weestigo lie in wait for them to eat them. Perhaps, after all, the Weestigo was nothing worse than an epileptic or a lunatic, but to the tribe he was bad medicine, and all his fellows feared to lay a hand on him, since all had that curious awe of the Indian for anyone whose mind is out of order. 285 OUT OF DOORS But though fear of the Weestigo paralyzed the busi- ness activities of the band, no hand was raised against him by any man. At last a certain baptized woman, by name Eliza, declared the men were not brave. So she took an axe and therewith did seriously tunk the Weestigo on the head ; whereupon Napisusis, Piu and Chuck-gun finished the business, until the Weestigo was a very dead fellow, which nobody could deny. Then, because in his life he had been of a cold heart, they cut open his breast and poured him full of hot tea, in order to warm up his heart, it being their in- tention to give him a better start in the world to which they had sent him. This act shows their kindliness. It also proves fully enough that in killing the Weestigo they had no idea whatever that they were committing any crime. The government, however, had different views. By and by officers of the law came and carried off to a prison far to the eastward the three men, Napisusis, Piu and Chuck-gun. It was all a surprising mystery to these latter, and it was not till after a long time that they became aware that possibly they might be hanged for laying the ghost of the Weestigo. They were peaceable and pleasant prisoners and made no trouble. They talked little, but observed much. By and by friends came to them and advised their getting a lawyer, but when they learned what a lawyer was 286 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION they declined. They had now been in jail many weeks. In all that time they had declined to talk about their case. They did not mention the Weestigo. "Yes, maybe he is dead," they admitted, "but we know noth- ing of it, and we do not like to talk of the dead." The prison life was hard for them. By and by Chuck-gun began to fail, and presently died, not long before the time set for the trial. Friends still ad- vised the two survivors to employ counsel, or to say something about their own case. They declined. "We do not like to talk about the dead," said they. They said little, but observed much. The day came when Napisusis and Piu were brought before the bar of justice and asked to plead. "Yes," said they, "it is true the Weestigo is dead. It is true also that Chuck-gun is dead. But why do you ask us about these things? We do not like to speak of the dead. We do not like to talk of Chuck-gun, because, as we have known all along, it was Chuck-gun who killed the Weestigo, and Chuck-gun now is dead. As for us, we are innocent. If Chuck-gun were alive he would say so. Therefore, let us go free." No lawyer could have devised a better defense, and as a matter of fact they were set free, because noth- ing could be proved against them. And the point sought to be made is that these red savages, thrown into a situation of extreme danger, among strangers 287 OUT OF DOORS and enemies, got themselves out of their plight simply by observing and studying for themselves. How they got their knowledge of the white man's law no one knows, but as a matter of fact, by saying little and looking much, they pulled themselves out of a bad hole. The Indian is extraordinarily observant. He makes his life secure by means of his age-old educa- tion, of the faculty of observation. You may find many other instances of the shrewd- ness of the Indian when placed in the white man's environment. I once was at a luncheon in New York where one of the guests was a Blackfoot chief. Part of the menu was terrapin. The old Indian ate it. After a time his host asked him what he thought of it. "I knew all the time it was snake" pointing to the little crooked bones on the edge of his plate, so strikingly resembling snake-ribs. "In my country we do not eat snakes, but before I left home I told the priest that I would do in all things as the white men did, you see." The old man was not only observing, but dead game. Once, when the first Hudson Bay steamboat plied on the Athabasca River, an old Indian welcomed the Indian agents who came up with the steamer. "Ah," said he, extending his hand, "I see the Great Father has built a great canoe. It is well, because the canoe will need to be large in order to carry all the 288 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION pigs which I suppose you are now going to bring me. I would rather have my pigs alive, and not done up in cloth with so much salt on them." 'Tigs what pigs ?" demanded the new agent of the old man. And then, to his consternation, he discov- ered that twelve years ago another agent carelessly had promised the old man a pair of pigs. Now, a promise is a promise in the North, and the government dare not break a promise once made to an Indian. The new agent was nonplussed when the Indian showed him some pieces of board covered with marks, which he had scratched into them with his knife-point. "All pigs," said the old man, "have each year as many little ones as I have fingers. Is it not so ?" The agent admitted that it was usually so. "And the next year each of these pigs would have as many more as I have fingers. Is it not so?" By this time the agent saw where he was going to land. If each of these pigs increased tenfold regu- larly for twelve years, it would indeed take a consid- erable canoe to carry them all. Yet the Indian had been promised a pair of pigs. The agent began to per- spire, but at last devised a plan to reach the Indian's intellect. He picked up a piece of bark, and on it drew a pic- ture of a large female pig and a little pig of the other persuasion. "See now," said he to the Indian, "wolves 289 OUT OF DOORS and foxes and beavers and all animals come in this way, do they not? Some of them may have as many little ones as you have fingers, but perhaps half of them will not have any at all; is it not so?" The old Indian, with a slight twinkle in the corne t * of his eye, said it was so, and although he knew little about pigs, he had observed that foxes sometimes had litters half male and half female. "Then, is it not plain that you will have to change all your count of these pigs which you have marked on the board? And suppose many of the little ones have been males how can you tell it was not so? And if you cannot, how can you say that this count is right, and that the Great Father owes you so many pigs?" The old Indian broke out into a laugh. "I was talking to you the way the trader would have talked to me." So they compromised on another pair of pigs to be delivered the next season by the steamboat. The Indian agent kept his word, and within half an hour after the two pigs had landed in the village the Indian dogs, delighted with this accession to the fauna of the country, ate them both up. The old Indian never complained, however, but admitted that the Great Father had kept his word. Your Indian is no mean observer, whether of natu- ral phenomena or of human characteristics, red or 290 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION white. After the Riel Rebellion in Canada, a certain Indian was put on trial for his life. He talked the matter over pretty fully with the priest and others. He figured that the judge who was coming out to try the prisoners in that district disliked the Mounted Po- lice, that the Indian department man was unfriendly to the prisoner. The priest advised the prisoner to be tried by the general of the forces, who would be on hand the next day. It chanced that the general in question was a very vain and pompous individual. The prisoner observed him for a time, and when at last he was brought be- fore the general, he stood for a time in silence. "Wah!" he said, in apparent admiration. "Surely, you are a great chief. When I saw so many men coming in your army, I said to myself, How can any man be wise enough to command so many men as this ? And yet you rule them and they all do as you say." "You are a cunning rawscal !" said the general ; but he set him free. The next day the regular trial judge arrived, but the prisoner, the priest and the general all pointed out that the man could not be tried the second time nor was he! These and countless other untold stories show well enough the keenness of the red intellect. Nor is the yellow brain of the Orient less observing. Set four 291 OUT OF DOORS Japanese loose in an American factory and they will show themselves able to go back to their own country and reproduce the mill. This has happened a score of times. The imitativeness of the Chinese is well known. Now, how about us of the boasted white race? Are our faculties of the sort to carry us forward into world competition, as a nation? Are our individual faculties, are yours and mine, of the sort to lead us to success in our own occupations in our own country? In short, are you and I observing in our own environ- ment or any other? Some of us are, and get good salaries. Others of us are not, and are lucky to have any salary at all. They become the day laborers, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the failures who work under direction of more observing minds. Most of us travel in rather small orbits, and most of us are continually reminded to cut out the useless things of life and to hang on only to the things im- mediately applicable to us. This is merely to say that modern civilization trains us to be cogs in a machine and not individuals in a community. We live in a city, but we forget how to live in the world. We for- get how to use our eyes, almost how to use our memories. Scientists tell us that there are two sorts of memory, the circumstantial and the philosophical. Perhaps 292 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION yours is the philosophical memory, which uses associa- tion of ideas. Perhaps your wife's is the circumstan- tial sort, which collects everything in the world, like a pack-rat. She can tell you what the weather was a year ago, or what necktie you wore three years ago, or when your cousin's birthday comes. You cannot remember these unimportant things. Woman's mem- ory is more apt to be circumstantial. She collects things useful or not useful. Science says she has changed less than her spouse. She ties us back to the days when men and women both had to be observant of the things about them, or perish in the struggle for existence. Have you yourself really good faculties for ob- servation, indoors or out of doors? There are suc- cessful men shrewd in business life who are very dull in outdoor life. Indeed, very few white men observe much of what goes on about them when they are in the open. For the average white man who goes into the wilderness the sermons of the stones are silent, and the books of the running brooks are shut. True, he does not need to read. He pays down his coin and has some red man or white man read them aloud to him. Many of our great sportsmen, so called, are not sportsmen at all. They buy with money the remedy for their own lack of skill, their own lack of observa- tion. As a matter of fact, once a woman takes to the 293 OUT OF DOORS open, she is apt soon to become more minutely ob- servant than her husband. Some women have been good detectives, some would make good scouts. When you are in the open, camping, hunting, trav- eling, how much do you know ? How much do you re- member? How much can you tell of the day's trail, as you sit by the campfire at night? How much of a map can you make of the country you have crossed? How many broken sticks or strange footprints have you seen? How far from camp is the clump of three Norway pines, which were on a hill, and on which side of the trail were they and did you see them at all? Send you back over that strange trail in the oppo- site direction, and you would be lost. You would not know how far it was to the last camp back. All the time you were traveling you were wondering how far it was. Or you were fighting your snowshoes or your pack or were distressed over something. Yet all the time your Indian or white guide was seeing a hundred things which did not exist for your eye. If your guide was proper woodsman, he could sit down at night and make you a map of the country you had crossed, one which any Indian could understand. It was Indians who made maps with charcoal marks, done on the inside of buffalo robes, which showed to Lewis and Clark the passage of the Rockies, the dif- 294 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION ferent divides, the way the streams ran. A haphazard city man, taken across the same country, could have made no intelligent account of it at all. In short, the stress of competition in modern civilized life is wip- ing out the savage in us, and making us citizens of cities instead of citizens of the great and interesting world, which was made for humanity to dwell in. In the city we see little of the world and only part of life. When you go moose-hunting in New Brunswick, caribou-hunting in Nova Scotia, salmon-fishing in Quebec, or duck-shooting on the Western marshes, you are in all likelihood reaching what you call suc- cess in sport through the trained observation of some other man. In the hardest and most relentless inter- pretation of the term, that is not sport at all. When you go in a duck marsh and hire a skilled boat-pusher to put out your decoys and build your blinds, after selecting a shooting spot, and perhaps to kill half your ducks for you as well, and not complain when you claim to have shot the legal limit, or double the legal limit, it is dollars to doughnuts that you are using his faculties of observation and not your own; and yet you will go back to your own business and wonder why you did not succeed in it. There are ex- ceptions to this rule. I know one very good duck- shot and trout-fisher who runs a successful planing 295 OUT OF DOORS mill against hard competition. One day I was in the mill, and he showed me a sawing table where boards were cut off into lengths for making boxes. These lengths dropped into carriers as fast as they were sawn. "We used to have a flat table," said he, "and when the lengths were sawn an operator had to push them off the table with one hand. It took time. So I just dropped the ends of the tables so they slanted, and now the boards fall of their own weight and no one has to touch them." It is little examples of good observation like that which make some men succeed. Therefore, whether at home or in the open, do not scorn the humble art of seeing things and remembering them, whether or not at the time they seem useful in your business. You can't tell when they will be useful in your busi- ness. That slant-top planing-mill table may have been the results of a study of a mink-track in the mud. In any case, it marked the success of a man who lived not only in a city, but in a world. Can you tell off-hand the color of the mud-hen's foot, or that of a mallard? Do all mallards have feet of the same color, and is that color yellow or red? What is the color of the mallard's bill? Of the mud- hen's? How many stripes, if any, does a blue-bill have on its bill? How many has the ring-bill or 296 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION black-jack? What is the color of the back of each? What is the shape of the canvas-back's bill? What of that of the red-head? What is the difference, if any, in the colors of the backs of the red -head, the blue-bill and the canvas-back? Do you know a gad- wall from a widgeon, or a gray-duck from either? How many species of song-birds do you know in your own neighborhood? Do they all migrate? At what time does each species appear in the spring? If you were an Indian you could answer all these questions. Can you draw a picture of a duck and put its hind legs on at the right place? Can you do the same for a prairie chicken? Does a prairie chicken have feathers clean down to its toes? What is the shape of its tail? Can you put on the ears of a moose in the right place, or the horns of an antelope, or the eyes of a woodcock? Do you know how long a buf- falo's tail -is? Can you tell a mink's track from a muskrat's? Can you tell a skunk from a coon, or a lynx from a wolver- ine, or a fox from a coyote, or a wolf from a dog, by the record either leaves in the snow or the sand? Do you know a gum-tree from a maple, or a maple from an ash, or an ash from hackmatack, or a hack- matack from a beech, or a beech from a birch, or a birch from a maple, or an oak from an elm, or a sycamore from a basswood? Can you name each of 297 OUT OF DOORS these when you see it in the woods by itself? Do you know a pine from a spruce, or a spruce from a bal- sam, or a balsam from a fir, or a fir from a hemlock ? Can you tell each on sight ? Do you know which way the shank of a spur bends, up or down? Why are the jinglers on a spur? Which is the longer canoe paddle, bow or stern, and why? Can you cinch a saddle without a buckle so it will not slip? What is an ear-bridle? How long is a cow- puncher's rope in Texas? In Arizona? In Califor- nia ? How many cinches does a saddle have in Texas ? In California? Why does a dog have a tail? Why does a deer have a splint on its leg, and which leg car- ries it? Can you mend the lock of your rifle or shot- gun, and do you know how either works ? Which way do the top of hemlock-trees point in your country? Do you know poison oak and poison -ivy? Do you know nut-grass when you see it, or smart-weed when you see it? Do you know a bull-moose track from that of a cow, and can you tell which way it is going in snow three feet deep? Any Indian, any good guide can answer every such question regarding the features and creatures of his own country. If you had to make a living in the wil- derness, you would know all of these things and a thousand more. You would observe a thousand things unconsciously. Not living in the world, but in the 298 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION city, we get lost when we go out into the world, show ourselves ignorant, helpless, sometimes hopeless. This faculty of observation varies in different men. It is not a thing absolute in any man. I would not trust any two judges of the Supreme Court of the United States to report a dog fight in the same way. Indeed, our eyes and ears and nerves lie to us all the time. Cross the first two fingers of your right hand, hold a bullet in your left hand, and let it rest between the tips of the two crossed fingers of the right. You distinctly feel two bullets, and yet you see but one. Put three fingers in the middle of your wife's back and ask her how many there are. Not even her prescience can always tell accurately. No two men see the same adjustment in a transit or level, or see the same rifle sights alike. We have a proverb that seeing is believing. Yet very likely offhand you can- not tell the color of your wife's eyes. And yet we boast the proudest civilization of the world. With half our faculties atrophied, finding our way home at night by a row of street lamps, where once our grandfather had to pick his way along the ridge road between the marshes, under the starlight where we would be totally lost in half a minute we are apt to pity Grandpa, and look down on benighted savages who never saw a town. Unused, our manual dexterity is forsaking us we are no longer handy 299 OUT OF DOORS men, able to make anything around camp. Unused, our faculties of observation desert us. We do not see the record written all around us in the woods. Even when the page is writ large and fair, as after a deep white snow, not all of us can read the writing done on it by Nature. We know a few little things and hold ourselves wise. And because we do know so few, and care so little to know more little things, most ofv us have in our planing mills the same flat-top table and we push the blocks off by hand. Most of us work along stolidly, stupidly, wishing someone to raise our salaries and wondering why we do' not succeed, as so many others have. Yet all the time we are doing what some more observing man has taught us and told us how to do. And yet all this time we do not live in a city we live in a world. The city masses men. The out-of- doors makes individuals of them, men of them. It is much to be doubted if the moving-picture show, the tango, and the colored comic Sunday supplement will do more to building us up as a race of useful, think- ing men than would a course of study not in the wavs of the city, but in the ways of the outdoor world. The fox boasted of his lost tail, and said it was the fashion where he came from. But that was amputa- tion and could be explained. It was a different thing from atrophy, and a thing less ominous. 300 THE FACULTY OF OBSERVATION One thing seems true, while on this subject of mud- hens' feet and mallards' bills, and red Indian philoso- phy and that is, that we cannot correct conditions in our civilization. All we can do is to correct and improve the individuals who make up that civilization. All we can do is to give wider and fuller and wiser lives to individual men and women. The individual 'life, the faculty of individual observation, the per- sonal wealth of knowledge and character, which can- not be taken away these are things also worth while. We cannot all of us take to the wilderness to live, much as some of us would like that. But whether we go there or not, we can cultivate in ourselves, perhaps, that kind of observation which applies equally to a mink track in the mud, and to a slant-top table in a planing mill. (i) UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. tiEVb CD-URP SEP 2 5 19 r Form L9-Series 444 Illlllllllllllllllllllll A 000030518 5