Boy Scouts Handbook Part 23

"Say, Seton, you are not a smoker; Jack is. Hadn't you better give him that match?"

There was sense in this. I have never in my life smoked. Jack was an old stager and an adept with matches. I handed it to him.

"Rrrp-fizz"--and in a minute we had a fire.

With the help of the firelight we now found plenty of dead wood; we made three blazing fires side by side, and after an hour we removed the centre one, then raked away all the hot ashes, and all lay down together on the warm ground. When the morning came the rain ceased. We stretched our stiffened limbs and made for camp. Yes, there it was in plain view two miles away across a fearful canyon. Three steps more on that gloomy night and we should have been over the edge of that canyon and dashed to the bottom.

How to Make Fire by Rubbing Sticks

"How do the Indians make a fire without matches?" asked a boy who loved to "play Indian." Most of us have heard the answer to this. "The Indians use a flint and steel, as our own fathers and mothers did one hundred years ago, and before they had flint and steel they used rubbing-sticks." We have all read about bringing fire out of two sticks by rubbing them together. I tried it once for an hour, and I know now I never would have got it in a thousand years as I was doing it. Others have had the same experience; consequently, most persons look upon this as a sort of fairy tale, or, if they believe it to be true, they think it so difficult as to be worth no second thought. All scouts, I find, are surprised and greatly interested to learn that not only is it possible, it is easy, to make a friction {71} fire, if you know how; and hopeless, if you don't. I have taught many boys and men (including some Indians) to do it, and some have grown so expert that they make it nearly as quickly as with an old-fashioned sulphur match.

When I first learned from Walter Hough, who learned from the Indians, it took me from five to ten minutes to get a blazing fire--not half an hour, as some books have it. But later I got it down to a minute, then to thirty-one seconds from the time of taking up the rubbing-sticks to having a fine blaze, the time in getting the first spark being about six seconds.

My early efforts were inspired by book accounts of Indian methods, but, unfortunately, I have never yet seen a book account that was accurate enough to guide anyone successfully in the art of fire-making. All omit one or other of the absolute essentials, or dwell on some triviality. The impression they leave on those who know is that the writers did not.

The surest and easiest method of making a friction fire is by use of the bow-drill. Two sticks, two tools, and some tinder are needed.

The two sticks are the drill and the fire-board, or fire-block. The books generally tell us that these must be of different kinds of wood.

This is a mistake. I have uniformly gotten the best results with two pieces of the same kind--all the better, indeed, if they are parts of the same stick.

What Kind of Wood

This is a very important question, as woods that are too hard, too soft, too wet, too oily, too gummy, or too resinous will not produce fire. The wood should be soft enough to wear away, else it produces no punk, and hard enough to wear slowly, or the heat is not enough to light the punk, and, of course, it should be highly inflammable. Those that I have had the best luck with are balsam fir, cottonwood roots, tamarack, European larch, red cedar, white cedar, Oregon cedar, ba.s.swood, cypress, and sometimes second-growth white pine. It should always be a dry, sound stick, brash, but not in the least punky.

In each part of the country there seems to be a kind of wood well suited for fire-making. The Eastern Indians used cedar; the Northern Indians, cedar or balsam fir; the plains Indians used cottonwood or sage-brush roots.

Perhaps the most reliable of all is dry and seasoned balsam fir; either the species in the North woods or in the Rockies will do. It gives a fine big spark or coal in about seven seconds.

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When in the grinding the dust that runs out of the notch is coa.r.s.e and brown, it means that the wood is too soft; when it is very fine and scanty it means that the wood is too hard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The rubbing-sticks for fire-making.]

1. The simplest kind of bow; a bent stick with a stout leather thong fastened at each end. It is about 27 inches long and 5/8 inch thick.

2. A more elaborate bow with a hole at each end for the thong. At the handle end it goes through a disc of wood. This is to tighten the thong by pressure of the hand against the disc while using.

3. Simplest kind of drill-socket; a pine or hemlock knot with a shallow hole or pit in it. 3a is under view of same. It is about 4-1/2 inches long.

4. A more elaborate drill-socket; a pebble cemented with gum in a wooden holder. 4a is under view of same.

5. A very elaborate drill-socket; it is made of tulip wood, carved to represent the Thunderbird. It has eyes of green felspar cemented in with resin. On the under side (5a) is seen, in the middle, a soapstone socket let into the wood and fastened with pine gum, and on the head a hole kept filled with grease, to grease the top of the drill before use.

6. The drill; 12 to 18 inches long and about 3/4 inch thick; it is roughly eight-sided so the thong will not slip, and pointed at each end. The best wood for the drill is old, dry brash, but not punky, balsam fir or cottonwood roots; but ba.s.swood, white cedar, red cedar, tamarack, and sometimes even white pine, will do.

7. Fire-board or block; about 3/4 inch thick and any length handy; a is notch with pit just begun, b shows the pit after once using and in good trim for second time, c shows the pit bored through and now useless; the notch is 1/2 inch wide and 3/4 inch deep.

8. Shows the way of using the sticks. The block (a) is held down with one foot, the end of the drill (b) is put in the pit, the drill-socket (c) is held on top in left hand, one end of the bow (d) is held in the right hand, while the bow is drawn back and forth.

9. Is a little wooden fire-pan, not essential but convenient; its thin edge is put under the notch to catch the powder that falls.

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I have made many experiments to determine whether there is anything in the idea that it is better to have the block and the drill of different woods.

But no hybrid combination was so successful as "two of a kind."

The drill and the bow and socket are fully described in the ill.u.s.tration.

The preparing of the fire-board is one of the most important things.

At the edge cut a notch half an inch wide and about three fourths of an inch deep; at the top of this notch make a pit or shallow hole, and the board is ready. The importance of this notch is such that it is useless to try fire-making without it.

While these are the essentials, it is well to get ready, also, some tinder. I have tried a great many different kinds of lint and punk, including a number that were artificially prepared, soaked with saltpetre or other combustibles. But these are not really fair play.

The true woodcrafter limits himself to the things that he can get in the woods, and in all my recent fire-making I have contented myself with the tinder used for ages by the red men: that is, cedar wood finely shredded between two stones. Some use the fringes that grow on birch, improving it by rubbing in powdered charcoal.

Now that he has the tools and material ready, it will be an easy matter for the matchless castaway to produce a fire.

Pa.s.s the leather thong once around the drill--and this should make the thong taut; put the lower point of the drill in the pit at the top of the notch in the fire-board, and hold the socket with the left hand on top of the drill. The notch of the fire-board should be resting on a chip or thin wooden tray. Hold the bow by the handle end in the right hand, steady the board under the left foot, and the left arm against the left knee. Now draw the bow back and forth with steady, even strokes, its full length. This causes the drill to turn in the pit and bore into the wood; ground-up wood runs out of the side of the notch, falling on the chip or tray. At first it is brown; in two or three seconds it turns black, and then smokes; in five or six seconds it is giving off a cloud of smoke. A few more vigorous strokes of the bow, and now it will be found that smoke still comes from the pile of black wood-dust on the chip. Fan this gently with the hand; the smoke increases, and in a few seconds you see a glowing coal in the middle of the dust. (There are never any visible flying sparks.)

Now take a liberal pinch of the cedar tinder--about a teaspoonful; wrap this in some bark fibre or shredded rope to {74} keep it from blowing away. Hold it down on the coal, and, lifting tray and all, blow or fan it until in a few seconds it blazes. Carefully pile over it the shreds of birch bark or splinters of fat pine prepared beforehand, and the fire is made.

If you have the right wood and still cannot get the fire, it is likely because you do not hold the drill steady, or have not cut the side notch quite into the middle point of the little fire pit.

The advantages of learning this method are threefold:

First: Fire-making by friction is an interesting experiment in woodcraft.

Second: A boy is better equipped having learned it. He can never afterward freeze to death for lack of matches if he has wood and an old shoe lace.

Third: For the very reason that it is difficult, compared with matches, it tends to prevent the boys making unnecessary fires, and thus reduces the danger of their setting the woods ablaze or of smoking the forbidden cigarette.

There is such a fascination in making the rubbing-stick fire that one of my Western cooks, becoming an expert, gave up the use of matches for a time and lit his morning fire with the fire-drill, and, indeed, he did not find it much slower than the usual way.

Walter Hough told me a story of an Apache Indian who scoffed at the matches of white men, and claimed that he could light a fire with rubbing-sticks faster than Hough could with matches. So each made ready. They were waiting for the word "go" when the Indian said:

"Wait. I see if him right." He gave a few strokes with the drill, and called--"Stop--stop him no good." He rearranged the sticks, and tried a few more strokes. Just as Mr. Hough was going to strike the match, he said: "Stop--stop him no good." He did this three times before he called "Ready." Then the word "Go" was given. The white man struck the slow, sizzling match. The Indian gave half a dozen twirls to the drill--the smoke burst forth. He covered it with the tinder, fanned a few seconds, then a bright flame arose, just before the white man got his twigs ablaze. So the Indian won, but it was by an Indian trick; for the three times when he pretended to be trying it, he was really warming up the wood--that is, doing a large part of the work. I am afraid that, deft as he was, he would have lost in a fair race. Yet this incident shows at least that, in point of speed, the old rubbing-sticks are not very far behind the matches, as one might have supposed.

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It is, indeed, a wonder that the soldiers at West Point are not taught this simple trick, when it is so easily learned, and might some day be the one thing to save the lives of many of them.

Archery

No woodcraft education is complete without a knowledge of archery. It is a pity that this n.o.ble sport has fallen into disuse. We shall find it essential to some of our best games.

The modern hunting gun is an irresistible weapon of wholesale murder, and is just as deadly no matter who pulls the trigger. It spreads terror as well as death by its loud discharge, and it leaves little clew as to who is responsible for the shot. Its deadly range is so fearfully great as to put all game at the mercy of the clumsiest tyro.