Part 22 (1/2)

HOW TO COOK YOUR FISH.

There are many ways of cooking your fish. The usual way is to fry him in a hot frying-pan. A slit should be cut in each side of the fish, as otherwise the heat is likely to burst his skin. A little salt and a pinch of mustard put in with the b.u.t.ter in the pan will add to his flavour.

But the simplest way, for you don't generally carry frying-pans with you when you go fis.h.i.+ng, is to cut a long stick that bends at an angle of forty-five degrees. Cut one arm to about one-third the length of the other. Trim the short arm with your knife till it is fine and pointed; pa.s.s this through the fish's mouth and then through the flesh near his tail, and toast him by the fire, back downwards, with a small lump of b.u.t.ter and a pinch of salt and mustard powder in his inside.

You will find him very good eating! A clean, flat stone makes a good plate.

THE FISHERMAN'S HAIL.

There, now I've told you how to catch and kill and cook your fish, I hope that you will soon be able to do it, and I wish you the old salutation which every fisherman wishes to another when they start out to fish, ”A tight line to you,” meaning that I hope you will get a big one on.

FOREIGN BOY SCOUTS

THE NORWEGIANS.

When my holiday in Norway came to an end, I was very sorry to pack up and come away. Even when I drove the last thirty miles in a cart to the railway I carried my rod in my hand, and when I saw a good-looking pool or run in a river--we were generally near a river--I stopped the cart for a few minutes and tried for a trout, and, what was more, I occasionally caught one!

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORWEGIAN SCOUTS WERE VERY LIVELY.]

At last I got back to Christiania and to proper clothes and clean hands--and I didn't like it a bit.

However, I was comforted by being told that the Boy Scouts wanted me to Inspect them, and I did so.

There was a parade of nearly eight hundred of them; fine, strapping, big lads they were, too, just like a lot of British boys, and dressed the same as us, and very lively and active.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NORWEGIAN FLAG. As you will see, it is something like the Union Jack.]

I had to present Colours to some of their troops, and their national flag is in some ways a little like our Union Jack. And I told them that they were as like British boys as their flag was like ours, and that their forefathers, the Nors.e.m.e.n, were mixed up with our forefathers in the old days, and I hoped that we would all be mixed together, in a friendly way, in these days--as brother Scouts.

THE SWEDES.

In England we are apt to look upon Norway and Sweden as almost one nation, but they are not so in reality. The Norwegians in the old, old days formed one nation with the Danes, but the Swedes have always been a separate nation which has never been under the rule of any other people. And they are very proud of this. So when I got amongst the Swedes, I found a totally different people, but they were equally kind and friendly to me, and they had an equally British-looking lot of Boy Scouts.

A large number of these had collected the day before I was to review them in Stockholm, and were camped there. So I went and saw them overnight in camp, and found them round their camp-fires, cooking their suppers, as jolly as sandboys. If they could do nothing else, they could, at any rates cook their food very well.

But they could do other things, too, as they proved next day at the Rally.

This took place on a big open sports ground.

The Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden were there to see them (the Crown Princess is the daughter of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, our President). Their Royal Highnesses are tremendously interested in the Scouts, and watched all that they did most keenly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SWEDISH BOY SCOUT AT THE RALLY.]

I heard many reports of the good work done by Swedish Scouts. Here is one: