Young Knights of the Empire Part 40

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:

When a boy is about fifteen or sixteen, he is taken by the men of his village, stripped of all clothes, and painted white from head to foot, and he is given a shield and one a.s.segai or small spear, and he is turned out of the village and told that he will be killed if anyone catches him while he is still painted white.

So the boy has to go off into the jungle and mountains and hide himself from other men until the white paint wears off, and this generally takes about a month; so that all this time he has to look after himself and stalk game with his one a.s.segai, and kill it and cut it up; he has to light his fire by means of rubbing sticks together in order to cook his meat; he has to make the skin of the animal into a covering for himself; and he has to know what kinds of wild roots, berries, and leaves are good for food as vegetables.

If he is not able to do these things he dies of starvation, or is killed by wild animals.

If he succeeds in keeping himself alive, and is able to find his way back to his village, he returns when the white paint has worn off, and is then received with great rejoicings by his friends and relatives, and is allowed to become a soldier of the tribe, since he has shown that he is able to look after himself.

TRACKING BY TOUCH.

General Dodge, of the American Army, describes how he once had to pursue a party of Red Indians who had been murdering some people.

The murderers had nearly a week's start, and had gone away on horseback. Rut General Dodge got a splendid tracking-scout named Espinosa to help him. The Indians were all riding unshod horses except one, and after Espinosa had been tracking them for many miles he suddenly got off his horse and pulled four horseshoes out of a hidden crevice in the rocks. The Indian had evidently pulled them off so that they should not leave a track.

For six days they pursued the band, and for a great part of the time there was no sign visible to an ordinary eye, and after going for 150 miles they eventually overtook and captured the whole party. But it was all entirely due to Espinosa's good tracking.

On another occasion some American troops were following up a number of Indians, who had been raiding and murdering whites, and they had some other Red Indian scouts to a.s.sist them in tracking.

In order to make a successful attack, they marched by night, and the trackers found the way in the darkness by feeling the tracks of the enemy with their hands, and they went at a fairly good pace for many miles, merely touching the track with their fingers; but suddenly they halted and reported that the track they had been following had been crossed by a fresh track, and on the commanding officer going up, he found the Indians still holding the track with their hands, so that there should be no mistake.

A light was brought, and it was found that the new track was that of a bear which had walked across the trail of the enemy! So the march continued without further incident, and the enemy were surprised, and caught in the early hours of the morning.

I myself led a column through an intricate part of the Matopo Mountains in Rhodesia by night to attack the enemy's stronghold, which I had reconnoitred the previous day. I found the way by feeling my own tracks, sometimes with my hands and sometimes through the soles of my shoes, which had worn very thin; and I never had any difficulty in finding the line.

Tracking, or following up tracks, is called by different names in different countries. Thus, in South Africa you would talk only of "spooring," that is, following up the "spoor"; in India it would be following the "pugs," or "pugging"; in America it is "trailing."

JACKAL CATCHING.

In India I have seen a certain tribe of gipsies who eat jackals. Now, a jackal is one of the most suspicious animals that lives, and is very difficult to catch in a trap, but these gipsies catch them by calling them in this way: Several men with dogs hide themselves in the gra.s.s and bushes round a small field. In the middle of this open place one gipsy imitates the call of the jackals calling to each other; he gets louder and louder till they seem to come together; then they begin to growl and finally tackle each other with violent snapping, snarling, and yelling, and at the same time he shakes a bundle of dried leaves, which sounds like the animals dashing about among gra.s.s and reeds.

Then he flings himself down on the ground, and throws up dust in the air, so that he is completely hidden in it, still growling and fighting.

If any jackal is within sound of this, he comes tearing out of the jungle, and dashes into the dust to join in the fight. When he finds a man there, he comes out again in a hurry, but meantime the dogs have been loosed from all sides, and they quickly catch him and kill him.

Mr. William Long, in his very interesting book called _Beasts of the Field_, describes how he once called a moose. The moose is a very huge kind of stag, with an ugly, bulging kind of nose. He lives in the forests of North America and Canada, and is very hard to get near; and is pretty dangerous when he is angry.

Mr. Long was in a canoe fishing when he heard a moose bull calling in the forest--so just for fun he went ash.o.r.e and cut a strip of bark off a birch tree and rolled it up so as to make a kind of megaphone, With this he proceeded to imitate the roaring grunt of the bull moose. The effect was tremendous; the old moose came tearing down, and even came into the water and tried to get at him--and it was only by hard paddling that in the end he got away.

CONCLUSION