
THE ART OF CAMPING 57 
man’s argument. Our supper was a glori- 
ous meal of fried brook trout, pork and 
_ beans and quantities of strong tea. 
Some weeks later the grub became low 
indeed, and I then proposed that we fall 
back on the remaining tins of emergency 
rations. This the men flatly refused to do; 
consequently, when lunch time came, I ate 
my share, while they looked on and gnawed 
some fragments of bannocks that had been 
discovered in one of the bags used for pillow 
cases. How long their determination would 
have held out I do not know, because that 
night we ran upon a lumberman’s cache, 
containing a barrel of flour. 
Il.— Camp CooKErRY 
One may procure cooking-outfits, the 
various articles of which ‘“‘nest”’ one within 
the other, but for a hard trip I do not think 
one gainsmuch by this. Potsand pans become 
so battered and dented that they refuse to 
nest, and then they are no better than the 
ordinary kind, that cost less. One of the 
never-failing sources of argument around 
the camp-fire, when old woodsmen are 
gathered together, are the relative merits of 
wide, shallow vessels and deep, narrow 
ones. I have often seen tests made, and 
generally the wide, comparatively shallow 
vessel proved the victor; but an old kettle, 
that is well blackened, always seems to bring 
the water to a boil quicker than a new, 
bright one. 
Aluminum vessels convey the heat more 
quickly than block tin or enameled iron, but 
these admirable qualities unfit aluminum 
as material for a cup from which to drink, as 
it absorbs heat from the liquid it contains 
and remains uncomfortably hot much longer 
than tin. Aluminum is most easily cleaned, 
and one saves a good deal in weight. Per- 
haps, taken as a whole, the wealthy man 
may indulge in the luxury of pots and ket- 
tles made of this material, and gain a little 
thereby, but their cost is so very much more 
than that of tin that they are to be looked 
upon as decided luxuries. 
Enamel ware is clean and durable, but it 
is too heavy for the peripatetic camper. 
The one indispensable article is the frying- 
pan. I have been away for days at a time 
from the main camp with nothing but a 
frying-pan—a good, deep one—and we got 
along quite nicely. First, we would make 
eur tea in the frying-pan and pour it into 
cups made of birch bark. Then we would 
fry our pork and make our bannocks in the 
same old frying-pan. This is not luxurious 
camping, but it shows what can be done in 
an emergency. The best frying-pan is deep 
and has a short socket, in which a long 
handle of green wood can be thrust. Such a 
pan is handy to pack. 
Next to the frying-pan in importance I 
would place the so-called kettle. The 
woodsman’s kettle is very different from the 
household utensil of the same name. It has 
no spout; its handle is of wire, and it has a 
cover—at least when it goes into the woods, 
though not, as a rule, when it emerges black- 
ened and battered. If to these articles we 
add a plate and a tin cup, generally called a 
dipper, we are approaching an outfit that 
some old huntsmen regard as bordering on 
the effeminate. Yet, the addition of a few 
knives, forks and spoons will hardly be 
cavilled at, although forks and spoons of a 
makeshift description may be quickly whit- 
tled out of some fragrant wood, usually 
-cedar. 
The greatest preventives of profanity, 
next to a well-ordered, imperturbable mind, 
are numerous cotton bags in which to pre- 
serve the various stores. Wilderness travel 
is rough and those foolish ones who place 
their dependence on paper bags will some 
day find their sugar and pepper have formed 
too close an alliance and their tea and salt 
have become so intimately blended as to 
defy separation. By using bags and attach- 
ing to them little tags bearing the names of 
the articles they contain, much trouble 
would be avoided. It is not a bad plan to 
cut nicks in the sides of these tags, so that 
one can tell in the dark, by the sense of 
touch, what is in the bag. This latter pre- 
caution is, however, not very necessary, 
unless the providing has been done on a 
generous scale. As a general thing, one 
knows perfectly well what is in each bag, as 
there is little to choose from, and toward 
the end of a long trip one is sometimes 
rather apt to congratulate one’s self if there 
is anything left in those bags that contain 
tea, sugar, tobacco and such like luxuries. 
I have generally noticed that the sugar gave 
out first, then the tobacco. It usually makes 
