downing] 



THE SUMMER OUTING 



241 



Camp cooking is an art that can be acquired only by experience. 

 It is well, in anticipation of the camping trip, to build a fire in your 

 back yard and try cooking a few meals before you start on your 

 pilgrimage. Otherwise you may find that you spoil so much of 

 your food in the first few attempts that the rations taken are so 

 much lessened as to produce serious want or cut short the trip. 

 The first essential in camp cookery is the proper sort of fire. If 

 you merely want to prepare soup or broil bacon and fish, the fire 

 should be only a small one. Select eight or ten sticks of maple, 



Fig. 8. Camp and camp fire. 



birch, or other hard wood, a foot long, an inch or so in diameter, 

 which you have cut from dry stuff. If it has been raining, so that 

 t lie ground is soaked, dead standing trees are the best to use for the 

 wood supply. Select four or five slender sticks of softer wood, or 

 split a couple of the hard wood sticks into smaller thickness for 

 kindling. With a knife, cut a good bunch of shavings on one side 

 of each of these pine sticks or kindlings. Set the sticks up on end, 

 the tips of the shavings pointing down, the shavings turned 

 toward each other. Let the top of the several sticks come together 

 and hold each other up in a sort of tripod arrangement. Stand the 



