The Art of Travel Part 12

The annexed sketch (fig. 1) represents a man sleeping in a natural att.i.tude. It will be observed that he fits into a concavity of about 6 inches in greatest depth. (The scale on which he is drawn is 6 feet long and 1 foot high.)

Hammocks.--See section on "furniture."

Coverlets.--General Remarks.--For an upper cover, it is of importance to an otherwise unsheltered person, that its texture should be such as to prevent the wind blowing through. If it does so, no thickness is of any avail in keeping out the cold; hence the advantage of skin carosses, buffalo robes, leather sheets, and macintosh rugs. All clothes lose much of their closeness of texture in a hot, dry climate; the fibres shrink extremely, and the wind blows through the tissue as through network. It is in order to make their coverings wind-proof, that shepherd-lads on the hills in Scotland, when the nights are cold, dip their plaids in water, before sitting or lying down in them. The wet swells up the fibres of the plaid, and makes the texture of it perfectly dense and close. It is also of importance that the outer covering should have a certain weight, so as not to be too easily displaced, either by the person fidgeting in his sleep or by the blowing of the wind. In dry weather there is nothing like furs; but in a rainy country I prefer a thick blanket bag (see "Sleeping Bags"), a large spare blanket, and a macintosh sheet and counterpane. It may be objected that the bag and macintosh would be close and stuffy, but be a.s.sured that the difficulty when sleeping on mother earth, on a bitter night, is to keep the fresh air out, not to let it in. On fine nights I should sleep on the bag and under the spare blanket.

Stuffy Bedding.--It must be understood that while recommending coverlets that resist the wind, I am very far from advocating extreme stuffiness, and for the following reason. Though a free pa.s.sage of the wind abstracts an excessive amount of animal heat from the sleeper, yet the freshness of pure air stimulates his body to give it out in an increased proportion.

On the other hand, sleeping-clothes that are absolutely impervious to the pa.s.sage of the wind, necessarily retain the cutaneous excretions: these poison the sleeper, acting upon his blood through his skin, and materially weaken his power of emitting vital heat: the fire of his life burns more languidly. I therefore suspect it would be more dangerous to pa.s.s a very cold night enclosed tightly in thin macintosh b.u.t.toned up to the chin, than without it. Much less heat would be robbed from the sleeper in the first case, but he would have very much less heat to spare. There is, therefore, an intermediate arrangement of sleeping-gear, neither too stuffy on the one hand nor too open on the other, by which the maximum power of resisting the chill of the night is obtainable.

Sleeping Clothes.--Some travellers prefer to have their blanket at once made up into a loose coat, trousers, and cap, pockets ad libitum, and a tape in the trouser band. An extra suit is thus always at hand, the sleeper loses little of the advantages of comfortable bedding, and is always, in some sense, dressed for any emergency.

Feathers.--When you collect bed feathers for coverlets, recollect that if they are cleanly plucked, they will require no dressing of any kind, save drying and beating.

Brown Paper.--Brown paper is an excellent non-conductor of heat and excluder of draughts: English cottagers often enclose sheets of it within their quilted counterpanes. If thoroughly soaked and then dried, it will not crackle.

Extra Clothes.--If a man be dest.i.tute of proper wraps, he cannot do better than put on all the spare clothes he possesses. The additional warmth of a single extra shirt is remarkable.

Dry Clothes.--However wet the weather may be during the day, the traveller should never relax his endeavours to keep a dry and warm change of clothes for his bivouac at night. Hardships in rude weather matter little to a healthy man, when he is awake and moving, and while the sun is above the horizon; but let him never forget the deplorable results that may follow a single night's exposure to cold, malaria, and damp.

Pillows.--A mound of sand or earth, sc.r.a.ped together for a pillow, is ground down into flatness, after a few minutes. A bag filled with earth, or it may be with gra.s.s, keeps its shape. Many people use their saddles as pillows; they roll up the flaps and stirrups, and place the saddle on the ground with a stone underneath, at its hindmost end, to keep it level and steady, and then lay their heads on the seat. I prefer using anything else; as, for instance, the stone without the saddle: but I generally secure some bag or other for the purpose, as, without a pillow, it is difficult to sleep in comfort. A bag shaped like a pillow-case, and stuffed with spare clothes, is very convenient. Some people advocate air-cushions.

Mr. Mansfield Parkyns' excellent plan, of sleeping on the side, with the stock of the gun between the head and the arm, and the barrel between the legs, will be described when I speak of "Guns."

BIVOUAC.

There are four ways in which travellers who are thrown upon their own resources may house themselves. They may bivouac, that is to say, they may erect a temporary shelter of a makeshift character, partly from materials found on the spot, and partly from the cloths they may happen to possess; they may build a substantial hut, which of course takes a good deal of labour to complete; they may use sleeping-bags; or they may pitch a regular tent. I will speak of these four methods of encamping, --the bivouac, the hut, the sleeping-bag, and the tent, in that order.

General Remarks.--Bivouacking is miserable work in a wet or unhealthy climate; but in a dry and healthy one, there is no question of its superiority over tenting. Men who sleep habitually in the open, breathe fresher air and are far more imbued with the spirit of wild life, than those who pa.s.s the night within the stuffy enclosure of a tent. It is an endless pleasure to lie half awake watching the stars above, and the picturesque groupings of the encampment round about, and to hear on all sides the stirrings of animal life. And later in the night, when the fire is low, and servants and cattle are asleep, and there is no sound but of the wind and an occasional plaintive cry of wild animals, the traveller finds himself in that close communion with nature which is the true charm of wild travel. Now all this pleasure is lost by sleeping in a tent. Tent life is semi-civilization, and perpetuates its habits. This may be ill.u.s.trated by a simple trait; a man who has lived much in bivouacs, if there be a night alarm, runs naturally into the dark for safety, just as a wild animal would; but a man who travels with tents becomes frightened when away from its lights, or from the fancied security of its walls.

In a dangerous country there can be no comparison between the hazard of a tent and that of a bivouac. In the former a man's sleep is heavy; he cannot hear nearly so well; he can see nothing; his cattle may all decamp; while marauders know exactly where he is lying, and may make their plans accordingly. They may creep up un.o.bserved and spear him through the canvas. The first Napoleon had a great opinion of the advantages of bivouacking over those of tenting. He said it was the healthier of the two for soldiers. (See p. 153.)

Shelter from the Wind.--Study the form of a hare! In the flattest and most unpromising of fields, the creature will have availed herself of some little hollow to the lee of an insignificant tuft of gra.s.s, and there she will have nestled and fidgeted about till she has made a smooth, round, gra.s.sy bed, compact and fitted to her shape, where she may curl herself snugly up, and cower down below the level of the cutting night wind. Follow her example. A man, as he lies upon his mother earth, is an object so small and low that a screen of eighteen inches high will guard him securely from the strength of a storm. A common mistake of a novice lies in selecting a tree for his camping-place, which spreads out n.o.bly above, but affords no other shelter from the wind than that of its bare stem below.

[Sketch of sleeping man behind wall].

It may be, that as he walks about in search of shelter, a ma.s.s of foliage at the level of his eye, with its broad shadow, attracts him, and as he stands to the leeward of it it seems snug, and, therefore, without further reflection, he orders his bed to be spread at the foot of some tree. But as soon as he lies down on the ground the tree proves worthless as a screen against the wind; it is a roof, but it is not a wall. The real want in blowy weather is a dense low screen, perfectly wind-tight, as high as the knee above the ground. Thus, if a traveller has to encamp on a bare turf plain, he need only turn up a sod seven feet long by two feet wide, and if he succeeds in propping it on its edge, it will form a sufficient shield against the wind.

In heavy gales, the neighbourhood of a solitary tree is a positive nuisance. It creates a violent eddy of wind, that leaves palpable evidence of its existence. Thus, in corn-fields, it is a common result of a storm to batter the corn quite flat in circles round each tree that stands in the field, while elsewhere no injury takes place. This very morning that I am writing these remarks, November 158, I was forcibly struck by the appearance of Kensington Gardens, after last night's gale, which had covered the ground with an extraordinary amount of dead leaves. They lay in a remarkably uniform layer, of from three to five inches in depth, except that round each and every tree the ground was absolutely bare of leaves for a radius of about a yard. The effect was as though circular discs had been cut out, leaving the edges of the layer of leaves perfectly sharp and vertical. It would have been a dangerous mistake to have slept that night at the foot of any one of those trees.

Again, in selecting a place for bivouac, we must bear in mind that a gale never blows in level currents, but in all kinds of curls and eddies, as the driving of a dust-storm, or the vagaries of bits of straw caught up by the wind, unmistakably show us. Little hillocks or undulations, combined with the general lay of the ground, are a chief cause of these eddies; they entirely divert the current of the wind from particular spots. Such spots should be looked for; they are discovered by watching the gra.s.s or the sand that lies on the ground. If the surface be quiet in one place, while all around it is agitated by the wind, we shall not be far wrong in selecting that place for our bed, however unprotected it may seem in other respects. It is constantly remarked, that a very slight mound or ridge will shelter the ground for many feet behind it; and an old campaigner will accept such shelter gladly, notwithstanding the apparent insignificances of its cause.

Shelter from the Sky.--The shelter of a wall is only sufficient against wind or driving rain; we require a roof to shield us against vertical rain, and against dew, or what is much the same thing, against the cold of a clear blue sky on a still night. The temperature of the heavens is known pretty accurately, by more than one method of calculation: it is -239 degrees Fahr.; the greatest cold felt in the Arctic regions being about -40 degrees Fahr. If the night be cloudy, each cloud is a roof to keep off the cold; if it be clear, we are exposed to the full chill of the blue sky, with only such alleviation as the warming and the non-conducting powers of the atmosphere may afford. The effect is greater than most people would credit. The uppermost layer of the earth, or whatever may be lying exposed upon it, is called upon to part with a great quant.i.ty of heat. If it so happen that the uppermost layer is of a non-conducting nature, the heat abstracted from it will be poorly resupplied by communication from the lower ones. Again, if the night be a very calm one, there will be no supply of warmth from fresh currents of air falling down upon it. Hence, in the treble event of a clear blue sky, a non-conducting soil, and a perfectly still night, we are liable to have great cold on the surface of the ground. This is shared by a thin layer of air that immediately rests upon it; while at each successive inch in height, the air becomes more nearly of its proper temperature. A vast number of experiments have been made by Mr. Glaisher on this subject ('Phil. Trans.' 1847), the upshot of which is that a thermometer laid on gra.s.s, under a blue sky on a calm night, marks on an average 8 degrees Fahr. colder than one 4 feet above it; 1 inch above gra.s.s, 5 1/2 degrees; 1 foot, 1 degrees; 4 feet, 1/2 degrees; on gravel and sand the differences are only about one-third as much. Sheep have a practical knowledge of these differences. Often, in an early walk on dewy mornings, I see all the sheep in Hyde Park bivouacked on the gravel walks of Rotten Row. The above figures are the results of experiments made in England, where the air is always moist, and the formation of dew, while it testifies to the cold of the night, a.s.sists largely to moderate it. In arid climates the chill would be far greater; such would also be the case at high elevations. One of Mr. Glaisher's experiments showed a difference of no less than 28 degrees between the cold on the ground and that at 8 feet high. This might often be rivalled in an elevated desert, as in that of Mongolia. Hence the value of the protection of a roof and of a raised sleeping-place, to a man sleeping under a blue sky in still weather, admits of easy interpretation.

Various Methods of Bivouacking.--Unprotected.--Mr. Shaw, the traveller in Thibet, says:--"My companion and I walked on to keep ourselves warm, but halting at sunset, had to sit and freeze several hours before the things came up. The best way of keeping warm on such an occasion, is to squat down, kneeling against a bank, resting your head on the bank, and nearly between your knees. Then tuck your overcoat in, all round you, over head and all; and if you are lucky, and there is not too much wind, you will make a little atmosphere of your own inside the covering, which will be snug in comparison with the outside air. Your feet suffer chiefly, but you learn to tie yourself into a kind of knot, bringing as many surfaces of your body together as possible. I have pa.s.sed whole nights in this kneeling position, and slept well; whereas I should not have got a wink had I been stretched at full length with such a scanty covering as a great-coat."

Bushes.--I have shown that the main object before sleeping out at night is to secure a long wind-tight wall, and that the next is to obtain a roof. Both these objects may be attained by pleachingtwo or three small neighbouring bushes into one; or branches may be torn off elsewhere and interwoven between the bushes. A few leafy boughs, cut and stuck into the ground, with their tops leaning over the bed, and secured in that position by other boughs, wattled-in horizontally, give great protection.

Long gra.s.s, etc., should be plucked and strewn against them to make them as wind-tight as possible.

Walls.--A pile of saddle-bags and other travelling gear may be made into a good screen against the wind; and travellers usually arrange them with that intention. Walls of stone may be built as a support to cloths, whose office it is to render the walls wind-tight, and also by lapping over their top, to form a partial roof. We have already spoken of a broad sod of turf propped up on edge.

"The Thibetan traveller cares for no roof overhead if he can shelter himself from the wind behind a three-foot wall. Hence the numerous little enclosures cl.u.s.tered together like cells of a honeycomb at every halting-place, with one side always raised against the prevailing wind.

(Shaw.) These walls are built round shallow pits, each with its rough fireplace in the middle.

Cloths.--Any cloth may be made to give shelter by an arrangement like that in the sketch.

[Sketch of cloth shelter].

The corners of the cloth should be secured by simple hitches in the rope, and never by knots. The former are sufficient for all purposes of security, but the latter will jam, and you may have to injure both cloth and string to get them loose again. It is convenient to pin the sides of the cloth with a skewer round the ropes. Any strip of wood makes a skewer. Earth should be banked against the lowest edge of the cloth, to keep out the wind, and to prevent its flapping. The sticks may, on an emergency, be replaced by f.a.ggots of brushwood, by guns, or by ropes carried down from the overhanging branches of a large tree. (For a sail supported by oars, see "Sail Tent" p. 108.)

Fremont, the American traveller bivouacked as follows:--His rifles were tied together near the muzzles, the b.u.t.ts resting on the ground widely apart; a knife was laid on the rope that tied them together, to cut it in case of an alarm; over this extempore framework was thrown a large india-rubber cloth, with which he covered his packs when on the road; it made a cover sufficiently large to receive about half of his bed, and was a place of shelter for his instruments.

Gordon c.u.mming.--The following extract is from Mr. Gordon c.u.mming's book on Africa: it describes the preparations of a practised traveller for a short excursion from his wagons away into the bush. "I had at length got into the way of making myself tolerably comfortable in the field, and from this date I seldom went in quest of elephants without the following impedimenta, i.e. a large blanket, which I folded and secured before my saddle as a dragoon does his cloak, and two leather sacks, containing a flannel shirt, warm trousers, and a woollen night-cap, spare ammunition, washing-rod, coffee, bread, sugar, pepper and salt, dried meat, a wooden bowl, and a tea-spoon. These sacks were carried on the shoulders of the natives, for which service I remunerated them with beads. They also carried my coffee-kettle, two calabashes of water, two American axes, and two sickles, which I used every evening to cut gra.s.s for my bed, and likewise for my horses to eat throughout the night; and my after-rider carried extra ammunition and a spare rifle."

Importance of Comfort.--To conclude these general hints, let the traveller, when out in trying weather, work hard at making his sleeping-place perfectly dry and comfortable; he should not cease until he is convinced that it will withstand the chill of the early morning, when the heat of the yesterday's sun is exhausted, and that of the coming sun has not begun to be felt. It is wretched beyond expression for a man to lie shivering beneath a scanty covering and to feel the night air become hourly more raw, while his life-blood has less power to withstand it; and to think, self-reproachfully, how different would have been his situation if he had simply had forethought and energy enough to cut and draw twice the quant.i.ty of firewood, and to spend an extra half-hour in labouring to make himself a snugger berth. The omission once made becomes irreparable; for in the cold of a pitiless night he has hardly sufficient stamina to rise and face the weather, and the darkness makes him unable to cope with his difficulties.

Bivouac in Special Localities.--Encampment in Forests.--A clump of trees yields wonderful shelter. The Swedes have a proverb that "the forest is the poor man's jacket." In fir-woods there is great facility in making warm encampments; for a young tree, when it is felled, yields both poles to support branches for shields against weather, and finer cuttings for flooring above the snow or damp. A common plan is to support a cross-bar by two uprights, as shown in the figure; against this cross-bar a number of poles are made to lean; on the back of the poles abundance of fir branches are laid horizontally; and lastly, on the back of these are another set of leaning poles, in order to secure them by their weight.

[Sketch of pole shelter].

On Bare Plains.--Avoid sleeping in slight hollows during clear still weather. The cold stratum of air, of which I spoke in the section of "Shelter from the Sky," pours down into them, like water from the surrounding plain, and stagnates. Spring frosts are always more severely felt in hollows. Therefore, in a broad level plain, especially if the night be clear and calm, look out for some slightly rising ground for an encampment. The chilled stratum of air drains from off it, and is replaced by warmer air. Horses and cattle, as the night sets in, always draw up to these higher grounds, which rise like islands through the sea of mist that covers the plain.

Walls have been built for shelter against the wind, on a bare sandy plain, by taking empty bags, filling them with sand, and then building them up as if they had been stones.

Buried, or in Holes.--A European can live through a bitter night, on a perfectly dry sandy plain, without any clothes besides what he has on, if he buries his body pretty deeply in the sand, keeping only his head above ground. It is a usual habit of the naked natives in Australia to do so, and not an unfrequent one of the Hottentots of South Africa. Mr. Moffat records with grateful surprise how he pa.s.sed a night, of which he had gloomy forebodings, in real comfort, even luxury, by adopting this method. A man may be as comfortable in a burrow as in a den. I shall speak of underground houses under "Hutting;" and for the present will only mention that, in arid countries, dry wells, dug by natives and partially choked by drifted sand, are often to be met with. They are generally found near existing watering-places, where they have been superseded by others, better placed and deeper. Now, there are few warmer sleeping-places than one of these dry wells; a small fire is easily kept burning at the bottom, and the top may be partially roofed over.

In Ashes of Camp Fire.--A few chill hours may be got over, in a plain that affords no other shelter, by nestling among the ashes of a recently burnt-out camp fire.

Warm Carcases.--In Napoleon's retreat, after his campaign in Russia, many a soldier saved or prolonged his life by creeping within the warm and reeking carcase of a horse that had died by the way.

By the water-side.--A stony beach makes a fine dry encamping-place, and has this advantage, that it makes it impossible for marauders to creep up unheard. But the immediate neighbourhood of fresh water is objectionable, for, besides being exposed to malaria and mosquitoes, the night air is more cold and penetrating by its side, than at one or two hundred yards'

distance from it. (I will speak of walls of rushes and reeds, under "Huts.")

By Rocks.--In the cruel climate of Thibet, Dr. Hooker tells us that it is the habit to encamp close to some large rock, because a rock absorbs heat all day, and parts with it but slowly during the night-time. It is, therefore, a reservoir of warmth when the sun is down, and its neighbourhood is coveted in the night-time. Owing to the same cause, acting in the opposite direction, the shadow of a broad rock is peculiarly cool and grateful, during the heat of the day, in a thirsty land.

On Heather.--Mr. St. John tells us of an excellent way in which Highland poachers, when in a party usually pa.s.s frosty nights on the moor-side.

They cut quant.i.ties of heather, and strew part of it as a bed on the ground; then all the party lie down, side by side, excepting one man whose place among the rest is kept vacant for him. His business is to spread plaids upon them as they lie, and to heap up the remainder of the heather upon the plaids. This being accomplished, the man wriggles and works himself into the gap that has been left for him in the midst of his comrades.

[Sketch of sleeping arrangement].

On Snow.--I shall have to describe snow-houses and snow-walls covered with sail-cloth, under "Huts." Here I will speak of more simple arrangements. Dr. Kane says:--"We afterwards learnt to modify and reduce our travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and to our apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our sledging outfit, until we at last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity--raw meat and a fur bag." Lieut. Cresswell, R.N., who, having been detached from Captain McClure's ship in 1853, was the first officer who ever accomplished the famous North-West pa.s.sage, gave the following graphic account of the routine of his journeying, in a speech at Lynn:--"You must be aware that in Arctic travelling you must depend entirely on your own resources. You have not a single thing else to depend on except snow-water: no produce of the country, nor firewood, or coals, or anything off the sort; and whatever you have to take, to sustain you for the journey, you must carry or drag. It is found by experience more easy to drag it on sledges than to carry it. The plan we adopt is this:--we have a sledge generally manned by about six or ten men, which we load with provisions, with tents, and all requisites for travelling, simple cooking utensils, spirits-of-wine for cooking, etc., and start off. The quant.i.ty of people can generally drag over the ice is forty days' provisions; that gives about 200 lbs. weight to each. After starting from the ship, and having travelled a certain number of hours--generally ten or eleven--we encamp for the night, or rather for the day, because it is considered better to travel at night and sleep at day, on account of the glare of the sun on the snow. We used to travel journeys of about ten hours, and then encamp, light our spirits-of-wine, put our kettle on it to thaw our snow-water, and after we had had our supper--just a piece of pemmican and a gla.s.s of water--we were glad to smoke our pipes and turn into bed. The first thing we did, after pitching the tent, was to lay a sort of macintosh covering over the snow; on this a piece of buffalo robe was stretched. Each man and officer had a blanket sewn up in the form of a bag; and into these we used to jump, much in the same way as you may see a boy do in a sack. We lay down head and feet, the next person to me having his head to my feet, and his feet to my head, so that we lay like herrings in a barrel. After this, we covered ourselves with skin, spreading them over the whole of us; and the closer we got, the better, as there was more warmth. We lay till the morning, and then the process was the same again." It appears that people may bury themselves in snow, and want neither air nor warmth. I have never made the experiment; but have read of numerous instances of people falling into snow-drifts, and not being extricated for many days, and when at length they were taken out, they never seem to have complained of cold, or any other sufferings than those of hunger and of anxiety.

HUTS.

Huts and Snow-Houses.--In making a depot, it is usual to build a house; often the men must pa.s.s weeks in inactivity, and they had better spend their time in making their quarters comfortable than in idleness.