110 
FOREST 
AND STREAM 
March, 1920 
FURNITURE FOR THE SUMMER CAMP 
HOW TO ARRANGE AND FURNISH THE TENT SO THAT IT WILL BE 
AS COMFORTABLE AND WELL-EQUIPPED AS ANY SUMMER HOTEL 
By LIEUT. WARREN H. MILLER. U. S. N. R. 
W E all take our go-light trips, in 
which a short stay in the woods, 
or the hurly-burly of a canoe trip, 
makes a strenuous fortnight of travel 
and adventure, but, in these days of ex- 
travagant hotel rates, another form of 
camping-out — t h e permanent cam p — 
presses urgently upon those of us whose 
pocketbooks make the summer vacation a 
pressing problem. While the go-light 
trip outfit will give reasonable comfort 
for a week or so, its devotees generally 
rush screaming for a razor and a bathtub 
at the end thereof, vowing “never again” 
to become the victim of insects, grime, 
cuts, bruises and general hard feeling un- 
der the name of sport. But they go 
again, just the same! — We all do! 
But, suppose your stay in the woods is 
not to be a matter of a week or so, but 
a month or more? And suppose you have 
the family and children along? Your 
loyal madam will put up with possibly 
a week of the wear and tear of camping- 
out, but, sooner or later, her feminine in- 
stincts assert themselves on the score of 
comfort and cleanliness. Now, as this is 
sure to take place before the end of the 
first week of camping, and you have 
prospects of a month or more of it, the 
mid-summer permanent camp, of which 
this article treats, must be planned to be 
as comfortable and well-equipped as any 
hotel you could afford. For, be assured 
that even within commuting distance of 
any large city, as New York or Philadel- 
phia, there are thousands of woodsy 
spots within an hour by train from your 
business, where you can set up your tent 
and leave the family for the 8:05 train, 
in as wild a spot as you chose, returning 
to them on the 5:20 to enjoy the week- 
ends and evenings with them. Many al- 
ready possess a bungalow or camp, to 
which they return year after year. To 
adventurous spirits this soon palls, or 
else the fishing becomes poor there, and 
the best solution of all seems to be an 
adequate wall tent or canvas house, prop- 
erly furnished and equipped for an all- 
summer stay. 
F OR a man, his wife and, say, two 
children, I have found that the so- 
called Maine camp arrangement is 
the best. It consists of two separate 
walls, placed side by side, with an inter- 
val of some ten feet between, and over 
the “Maine” camp 
this interval is spread an ample fly, with 
a rock fireplace at the back and properly 
screened against insects. This middle 
space is the living room, as it were, of 
the camp, with the two tents for sleeping 
quarters, the 7' x O' or even the 
7' x 7' being amply large enough, and the 
smaller the better. I prefer, however, the 
7' x 9', for this leaves a bit of room for 
hanging clothes and establishing some 
sort of a bureau and wash-stand at the 
end of the cots. It is well worth while to 
have a gauze window in both front and 
back .side walls of these tents, each pro- 
tected by canvas shades, which are guyed 
out to form awnings in fine weather and 
roped in tight during storms. One, then, 
is more in touch with the world of nature 
in the forest, and avoids the collection 
of dampness at night exhaling from the 
duff below, and, most important of all, 
these windows keep the tent cool and 
breezy by day, disposing of the well- 
known tendency of tents to turn them- 
selves into sweat-boxes when Sir Sun is 
shining mightily. 
Neither of these tents need floors, but 
I prefer that they should have sod-cloths, 
for the ability of insects to get in under 
the edges of a tent without sod-cloths, — 
and hunt up the inmates and dine upon 
them — is unbelievable. For a floor, the 
best is a mat of spruce or balsam browse 
a few inches deep. Leaf mould soon be- 
comes pulverized and dirty, so that walk- 
ing on it is a penance, but the spruce 
browse is fragrant and lasting, and an 
occasional renewal keeps it fresh and 
firm under foot. 
To erect these tents, we assume that 
you have decided to leave your poles and 
ridge rafter at home, to avoid unman- 
ageable baggage, and so you will cut a 
pair of shears in the forest of long bal- 
sam or pine poles for each end of each 
tent. Setting these up, a long pole is 
next laid in the shears joining both 
tents, and on this is stretched the fly 
which connects the two. This gives you 
the structure for the whole camp, cut 
right in the woods, where nearly every- 
thing you need should be secured. For 
camping in hardwood forests, a thicket 
Lay-out of a summer camp for four persons 
