Part 40 (1/2)

TIPS FOR THE CAMPING SEASON.

If you make your own sleeping bag out of canvas or sacking, remember two points: first, to have its flaps about a yard longer than yourself, so that you can get well into it in case of rain, and secondly: that to keep warm and dry you want more thickness underneath than above you.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A COMFORTABLE SLEEPING BAG.]

The best way is to have a double sheet under you, or, in other words, make your sleeping bag a double one; you can then fill the lower part with straw, and sleep yourself in the upper compartment.

The object of having long flaps is seen in the ill.u.s.tration. The lower one can be rolled with your spare clothes inside it to form your pillow, while the upper one can be supported by a crossbar to form a little roof over your head. In a sleeping bag of this kind, if waterproof, you can sleep out without a tent at all.

HOW TO MAKE A CAMP BED.

A very simple and comfortable form of camp bed-and one which you can easily rig up and use in your home, or at an inn, if a bedstead is not available-is this: Make a ”hasty stretcher” with two staves and a sack, and lay the ends of the staves on a couple of logs, stones, or boxes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: READY FOR USE.]

Keep the staves apart by crossbars, and you have a most comfortable bed. But don't forget to put plenty of blankets, and some thick paper, if you are short of blankets underneath you.

This bed is the best possible one to use when you have to camp on damp ground.

HOW A TENDERFOOT SITS DOWN.

In camp you can generally tell a tenderfoot from an old scout from the way in which he sits down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WRONG WAY.]

A tenderfoot sits right down on the ground, but the old hand, knowing that this is very likely to give you chill and bring on fever, rheumatism, or other ailments, either squats on his heel, or on both heels--which comes all the more easy if you put a stone under each heel as a support, or if you have your back against a tree.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RIGHT WAY.]

When an old scout sits on the ground, he always takes care either to sit on his hat, or on a bundle of dry heather, or something that will keep him off the actual ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW AN OLD HAND SITS DOWN.]

Two ex-Boy Scouts, now officers in the Army, sent me a contribution to our funds lately, as a thanks offering for all the campaigning dodges which they had learnt as Scouts and which had been most helpful to them on active service.

So practise all you can of these tips which I have given: you never know when they may not come in useful to you.

TRAINING AND TRACKING

ZULU TRAINING.

The native boys of the Zulu and Swazi tribes learn to be Scouts before they are allowed to be considered men, and they do it in this way: