WHAT TO DO IF LOST IN THE WOODS 227 



piece to raise the small sticks, is to secure draft; 

 otherwise the weight of your material will choke 

 the fire. When once well under way, almost any- 

 thing will burn, no matter how wet it may be. 

 Avoid building a fire alongside of a cliff, or a 

 large standing tree, as the first is dangerous from 

 pieces falling or flying off when heated. The sec- 

 ond may burn sufficiently through the trunk to 

 fall during the night. If a tree is cut down, how- 

 ever, before lighting your fire, the stump forms a 

 most excellent back piece, and when well lighted, 

 will make a fire that will last for hours. Since 

 the introduction of tents and camp stoves, the 

 need of open fires has decreased, but even in man- 

 aging a stove, there is a knack in the lighting of 

 it, the principle of which is to allow air space. 



When I was trapping with my brother, we 

 often made experiments as an amusement some- 

 times in cases of necessity in lighting a fire 

 without matches. The steel and flint were still 

 in existence in those days, and we always had 

 them, with punk or burnt cotton, which we kept 

 in a waterproof bag, made out of sealskin or 

 sometimes of the skin of some small animal. In 

 the old times this was carried daily on a belt, but 

 in our case it was left hanging in our permanent 

 camp, as a reserve in case our matches gave out or 

 were accidentally lost or spoiled. Making a fire 

 from the flint and steel was quite easy, but I had 

 read that some tribes made fire by rubbing two 



