A MAKESHIFT FIRE-HEARTH. 469 



you wish, however, to have it on the floor, it is better 

 to have some rough sea- weed or moss under the 

 stones and packed around them, which should be 

 kept wet. Thus with common care and intelligence 

 nothing can be injured by the heat. The fishing 

 hookers on the west coast of Ireland all use this 

 plan and burn peat turf. We have many times made 

 coffee and cooked fish while at sea in this manner, 

 very comfortably. In canoe or boat journeys on 

 rivers, of course, it is usual to land. , If a sand 

 bank can be found in mid-stream land there; because 

 there the traveller is less likely to be worried 

 by flies than on the shore, and dry banks in mid- 

 stream also generally supply enough drift wood for a fire. 

 There are doubtless many good cooking stoves and 

 other devices suitable for boats of various sizes, to be 

 bought in the shops, but in wild countries these things 

 are not always to hand; and if they were, we doubt 

 very much if in the end any great advantage would 

 be found in practice over the makeshift fire-hearth we 

 have suggested, which as we have stated, is an old 

 Irish device, simple, cheap, and efficacious. 



Irrespective of the ordinary risks which must be 

 necessarily incurred by all whose business or pleasure 

 takes them far from land, the fisherman on large 

 inland sheets of water must be prepared for the chances 

 of being overtaken by storms, while crossing, or troll- 

 ing in, extensive lakes. We think it desirable to 

 mention that even on the ocean itself, there is no- 

 where that a small boat may have to face a more 

 dangerous sea than sometimes suddenly gets up 

 upon lakes. Heavy squalls at sea are of course almost 



