CAMP. 71 



If the weather be bad or threatening, the tents should 

 be placed if possible with their backs to the wind. 

 Whatever may be the state of the weather, there should 

 always be dug a trench around the back and sides, the 

 earth removed, and piled against the tent, and on the 

 flap or loose piece of canvas at the bottom. This will 

 secure the inmates from damp in case of rain, and also, by 

 preventing the wind from getting under the tent, greatly 

 lessen the danger of its getting overturned by wind- 

 storms. 



I confess to being something of a sybarite. I like to 

 have a good tent, nice mess-kit, plenty of bedding, and 

 everything to make me comfortable. For six or eight 

 years of his youth a man can manage with a couple of 

 blankets for bed, saddle for pillow, hard tack and bacon 

 for provender ; but after that, these become a little 

 monotonous, and the ordinary human longs for something 

 more. Especially is this the case in the army, where, after 

 some years of hardships, the result many times more of 

 bravado than of absolute necessity, one begins to realise 

 that this is his life, and the enjoyment of life is simply 

 the aggregation of the enjoyments of each day. 



My advice is then to every one, to come to the plains 

 as his means and the amount of his transportation will 

 permit. No superfluities, only necessaries and comforts. 

 His kitchen should have a small sheet-iron cooking-stove 

 (made for plains travel, and can be bought in any 

 frontier town), with a sufficient variety of cooking 

 utensils. His stock of provisions should be as varied as 

 circumstances will permit, including an assortment of 

 canned fruit and vegetables. 



There is no reason why his table furniture should not 

 satisfy the eye. He should have a light thin mattress, 

 with ample bedclothes and a bedstead. The simplest, 

 best, and easiest transported consists of three or four thin 

 boards laid lengthwise on a couple of strong but light 

 tressels about twenty inches high. In travelling the 



