58 RECREATION 
no difference how much you originally start 
with, as the more you have of these com- 
modities the more lavishly the men will help 
themselves. As for Worcestershire sauce, 
some of my Indian friends would get away 
with a gallon a week if it were obtainable. 
The art of cooking is one that is to be 
learned only by experience. On one of my 
journeys into northern British Columbia I 
took some lessons from a baker before start- 
ing, and the knowledge I acquired was more 
valuable to me than the smattering of the 
higher mathematics that I acquired at col- 
lege. Many books on camp cooking have 
been written, but as they usually begin each 
recipe with “Take a little-of this, and a 
little of that,” and as you have neither 
‘this’? nor ‘‘that,’? you find such delicacies 
as plum pudding without the plums and 
without the citron, and with nothing but the 
flour and the suet, are not a huge success. 
No doubt the general principles of cook- 
ing are the same in the open air as in a well- 
ordered kitchen. Yet, a very good cook 
might find it difficult to emulate the feats of 
some unpretentious woodsman, if he found 
himself in a wet, sodden forest, with dark- 
ness coming on, and he were told to get a 
hearty meal for a half-dozen hungry men as 
quickly as possible. Under such conditions 
fancy dishes are out of place. A man that 
knew his business would set about the job 
somewhat as follows: The flour bag would 
be opened, a handful of salt with a suffi- 
ciency of baking powder and enough flour 
for the purpose would be mixed with water 
into a batter. This a backwoods cook al- 
ways does in the flour bag itself, rolling back 
the top of the bag before beginning. After a 
time he has a mess of well-kneaded dough 
in a circular basin of flour. This is made 
into flat cakes, and they are placed in a 
couple of frying-pans, tilted at an angle 
before the embers, or, better still, should 
he have a bake-oven or reflector, it is placed 
in this, and a great mass of hardwood coals 
are strewn in front of and underneath the 
tray that contains the dough. This bread 
will require very constant watching and 
turning, so that the cook dare not leave it 
for long. He finds time, however, to put on 
a large kettle of water to boil and to cut up 
his salt pork ready for parboiling. When 
the bread is baked, an operation that does 
not take very long, a frying-pan is half filled 
with water, and the pork boiled until all the 
salt is out. Two or three changes of water 
may be required. The kettle is now boiling 
and a liberal amount of strong black or 
green tea is thrown in. This is usually 
allowed to boil for a minute or two, and then 
taken off and stood to draw on the hot 
embers. The old household allowance of 
‘one spoon for each person and one for the 
pot” will not do in the woods; for some 
occult reason, more of the leaf is required in 
open-air cookery, though I must confess 
most woodsmen. overdo. the thing, and, 
moreover, they boil their tea far too long. 
This and the amount of fried food they are 
forced to eat probably account for the indi- 
gestion from which even the most rugged 
often suffer. 
But to return to our cooking: The tea 
and the bread being ready, the pork is soon 
fried sufficiently, and if it is a hurry-up 
meal the welcome cry of ‘‘Snack-ho!” 
resounds through the forest. Given a little 
more time, the cook will probably furnish 
beans and apple stew. Beans, however, 
require time, as they must be well cooked, 
and are not fit to eat until they have been 
soaked so as to become tender. Sometimes, 
in the mountains, at high elevations, it is 
impossible to cook beans, and equally im- 
possible to cook potatoes by boiling, as the 
temperature of the water never becomes 
high enough to make them soft. The tyro 
is usually fooled when he first tries to cook 
beans, or rice, or dried apples. He puts in 
far too-little water and too many of the other 
things; consequently, after he has put the 
lid on and is contentedly gloating over the 
magnificent repast he will spread before his 
companions, an unwelcome odor of burning 
causes him to rise hastily and take the lid 
off the kettle to see what has happened. 
Instead of a toothsome mess, he finds noth- 
ing but a quantity of charred food that a 
starving dog would disdain. 
In- well-ordered households game birds 
are invariably plucked; in the bush, the rule 
isto skin them. It isa rough and ready pro- 
ceeding and not calculated to improve the 
flavor of a delicate grouse. But it must be 
remembered that game is never really worth 
eating unless it has been hung a short time, 
and this can rarely be done when traveling, 

