THE ART OF CAMPING ~ 
From the Utilitarian Standpoint 
BY CHARLES A. BRAMBLE 
(Copyright, 1906, by Charles A. Bramble) 
II.—Tents, TEPEES AND OTHER SHELTERS 
ERY often the best tent 
isnoneatall. Napoleon 
found that his troops 
were more healthy 
bivouacking under the 
stars than when he 
forced them to sleep in 
crowded tents. If you 
have plenty of wood, 
and your journey is 
through a forest-covered 
country, you need not 
worry much about a 
tent, but in the open and where fuel is 
scarce a wind-proof shelter of some kind is 
necessary to comfort, and even existence in 
winter time. 
Some years ago, when I was taking my 
first lessons in woodcraft, I was told not to 
take a closed tent into the woods in winter, 
or I should suffer severely. This seemed 
strange advice, but as my informant was 
evidently in earnest, and, moreover, a most 
experienced man, I left my little tent behind, 
though not without some misgivings, and 
plunged into the snow-smothered forest. 
The temperature often fell to far below zero, 
yet I had no cause for complaint, and under 
the same conditions should not now dream 
of packing a tent, be it ever so light. 
In the first place, we had nothing but our 
blankets, provisions and a few axes and 
kettles to carry on our toboggans, a matter 
of moment when -you have to haul all your 
outfit on small toboggans in the track made 
by your snowshoes. Hardened trappers 
and very muscular men can at a pinch haul 
a load of 200 pounds for several miles, but 
even such much prefer a load of half that 
weight, and the average young athlete— 
gymnasium trained—will find seventy-five 
pounds quite enough for fun. In cold 

weather the toboggan does not do the glid- 
ing act, except when you are descending a 
steep hill and would rather it did not: 
generally the snow is as gritty as sand, and 
as I write I seem to hear the crunching and 
the creaking of the straining sled, and almost 
find my breath coming in pants because of 
the exertion of the hour. These are the 
moments when the woods wanderer realizes 
the comfort that is to be got out of some 
things—if you have only not brought them. 
So let us agree, that in a forest-covered 
country where there is an abundance of 
fuel one can get along quite comfortably in 
winter without a tent, or at most with a 
couple of strips of light drill, high enough 
to make a wind-break. The winter camp 
in the North is made thus: The snow is 
shoveled aside with the snowshoes, and 
banked up at the rear and sides of the en- 
campment; some poles are cut and stuck 
into the snow leaning toward the place 
the fire is to occupy, brush laid against 
them as a thatch, and then a fire is made 
that would roast an ox whole. Once the 
fire is well lit, the face of the wilderness 
undergoes a great and inspiring change. 
Where all was white and desolate now is 
glowing and homelike. You spread a few 
boughs, fir for choice, beneath your lean-to, 
and then, wrapping yourself in your tattered 
old gray or blue blankets, sleep far more, 
soundly than you might back home. What 
matter if the mercury in the bulb be frozen, 
and the trees crack like pistol shots with 
the frost? You have but to rise every two 
or three hours and roll another dry pine 
log on the embers and Jack Frost will have 
no further terrors for you, that night at least. 
The foregoing applies to rough and ready 
camping. When conditions are not quite so 
arduous it is better to carry two or more 

