IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



may be expected, and the best indications 

 as to the future are discoverable — about 

 4 a.m., 11 a.m., and 7 p.m.? 



In the matter of tents, some radical 

 views are exposed for those willing to 

 prove all things, and hold fast that which 

 is good. The common designs partake in 

 the same defects. They are heavy for 

 their sheltering capacity, awkward to move 

 about in, slow in drying, smotheringly hot 

 when the sun is upon them, incapable of 

 being warmed except by a stove, stuffy to 

 suffocation when closed, a trap for flies — 

 you being the bait — which repose them- 

 selves aloft and await their hour. A tent 

 modelled on the woodland lean-to is with- 

 out these failings, and has further points 

 to its credit. Let me give the specifica- 

 tions of one put together out of light duck 

 by a village cobbler. Designed, and com- 

 fortable, for six men, eleven have slept 

 there dry on a rainy night. Six thirteen- 

 foot lengths of the cloth sewed side by side 

 form the body. At one end of this rect- 

 angle are eyelets with loops of cotton cord 

 for pegging, edge to ground. Ten feet 

 away a transverse sleeve of duck is sewed 

 to the inside for the ridge-pole to pass 

 through — this preventing any shift in the 

 240 



