The rule at every camp should be: "If water is not 

 handy, sand or ordinary soil may be used to cover the 

 fire and choke it." 



The worst fireplace is on forest humus, vegetable 

 muck or peat. These are soils that burn, if they are 

 dry, and in such places a campfire may smoulder for 

 weeks or even months, and there in dry weather a 

 wind may fan it into a destructive fire. If a campfire 

 has to be built on such soil it should only be built 

 where the ground is damp and the greatest care must 

 be taken to extinguish it. 



The camper has use of two kinds of fire, the cook- 

 ing fire and the evening or cold weather campfire. For 

 cooking a rather small fire is the most serviceable. It 

 may be built between stones, or between two logs 

 placed in this wav or on the flat ground, 



but never against or close to a tree. Along the Min- 

 nesota river magnificent cottonwoods have been killed 

 by thoughtless campers and conoeists building their 

 fires close to the tree trunks. Granite, sandstone, 

 quartzite, and all the igneous rocks of the Great Lake 

 country make good fireplaces, but soft, water-soaked 

 limestones are dangerous. Steam is apt to form in their 

 cracks and cleavage planes and cause them to explode 

 with great violence. I had one experience in which a 

 rock from my fireplace was scattered in fragments 

 among the treetops like a bursting shrapnel and since 

 then I use no limestone in my fireplaces. It is desir- 

 able not to build the fire in a hollow where the wind 

 eddies, -for in such a place one has to keep circling 

 around the fire to avoid the smoke. 



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