250 AMERICAN 
A fourteen-foot folding canoe ready for use 
Outing With 
HOMES 
AND GARDENS 
Carrying a folding canoe set up in the water 
a Portable Equipment 
By A. William Masters 
Whe UTING with portable equipment is an- 
Kae nually growing more popular. With far 
less than the weight of an ordinary trunk, 
taken to a resort on vacation, one can 
paddle his own folding canoe and sleep 
in his own folding tent, and comfortably 
carry both of them rolled up on his back 
when tramping. A soldier must take about seventy pounds 
of equipment on his back when marching, independent of 
the tent he is to sleep in when camping over night, which 
shelter goes with the jack train. The “outer,” however, 
need not carry that amount of weight in tent and canoe 
combined, so lightly are such things constructed. 
The canvas boat fills a modern necessity. It can be 
placed in water where no boats are available. It makes the 
owner practially independent of all other forms of travel, 
enabling him to reach the obscure places and live in them, 
where even the farmhouse is far distant. Food of to-day 
is also portable, done up in tin cans. Even coffee has recent- 
ly been made portable—that is, a recent invention places it 
on the market in the form of a powder, a teaspoonful of 
whichy “merely 
stirred up in hot or 
cold water, makes 
a delicious drink, 
far better than can 
be bought at the 
majority of restau- 
rants by the cup. 
In past years, 
thousands of lakes 
and streams that 
afforded excellent 
outings, could not 
be utilized because 
thveme-) was) 10 
means of reaching 
them and no boats 
to enjoy them when 
reached. The fold- 
ing canvas boat has 
placed all such 
waters within the 
reach) of “every 
outer... Minese 
ideal places in con- 
sequence now more and more attract those who delight in 
solitudes and quiet. They have no resort hotels, steam- 
boats, camp meetings, Chautauquas, railways or noise. To- 
day, at the end of the railway journey, the outer carries 
the folded canoe and tent under his arm or on his back. 
He may charter a buggy to cart his equipment to the near- 
est water or trough, as he pleases. The desired body of 
water has most always a stream leading to it from some 
railway station. If so, the outer has only to leave the train, 
set up his canoe and paddle or row to the desired lake 
or haven. 
On the other hand, the canvas canoe or rowboat may 
be taken to the big and little resorts where there are abund- 
ant hotels and boarding-houses. The outer will then have 
his own craft with no exhorbitant boat bill to pay. At 
night, if desirable, he can fold up his boat and take it to his 
bedroom. Assuming that a change in fishing is desirable, 
if the outer purposes to be driven ten or fifteen miles to 
some lake where there are no accommodations and remain 
over night or longer, all he has to do is to take his folding 
boat along, with tent tops, and sleep in it for one or two 
nights, or hoist his tent top if it rains. 
Canvas boats are now made life-saving; that is, they can- 
not be tipped over by one man standing anywhere upon 
them; if tipped over 
or filled with water 
by any cause, the 
smallest of them 
will still hold two 
people without sink- 
ing. It takes only 
five minutes to set 
one up or fold it up. 
It can be romywem 
twice as fast with 
only one-half as 
much arm power as 
a wooden boat re- 
quires. It is less ex- 
pens? veo thanme 
wooden boat. It 
has life-saving air 
chambers, double 
paddles or jointed 
oars, carrying ease, 
combination thwart 
seat, spreaders, oar- 
A large fishing party in camp by a mountain lake locks and camp 
chairs. It may also 
have tent tops, cabin ends or cabins covering the whole 
boat. The bottoms are flat, smooth and rigid. It never 
leaks and will last a generation, as the canvas is water- 
a 
