August, 1919 
FOREST AND STREAM 
395 
Threading narrow water courses 
The delectable meal 
Thinking it over in camp 
bag has a stout maple rod sewed into 
one lip, and, to fasten it up you roll the 
other lip around this rod until the bag 
is rolled tight and then secure with 
rope around the bag or a pair of school 
book straps. As they are rather ex- 
pensive ($3.00) to buy I will give you 
here the way to make them yourself. 
Get a yard of ten-ounce brown par- 
affined duck canvas at a ship chan- 
dler’s or awning maker’s. It costs 
forty cents a yard and comes 28 inches 
wide. Cut off a six-inch strip along one 
edge, and out of this strip make two 
circular ends for your bag, 8 inches in 
diameter. Get a V^-inch maple dowel 
from a hardware store and cut it 22 
inches long. Sew a hem along both lips 
of your bag and slip the rod into one 
lip and secure by sewing over the end of 
the hem. Now sew the circular ends 
half around to the ends of your bag and 
fill in the rest of the space with a khaki 
end cloth, as shown in the pattern, fin- 
ishing the whole thing with an edging of 
gray tape. Sew inside two khaki strips, 
8 inches wide by 30 inches long to make 
two rows of three pockets each. Each 
pocket will take ten inches of your cloth, 
the back of the pocket being the wall 
of the bag. Put two school straps around 
the bag, about a foot apart and join 
with a strap riveted around each of 
the two straps to make a carrying han- 
dle, or, just get a ten cent shawl-strap 
at the five-and-ten-cent store and use it 
in lieu of the schojl book straps. Total 
cost; canvas. 40 cents; khaki, 20 cents: 
straps, 10 cents: all together. 70 cents. 
One bag will hold all the food four 
men wi'l ne°d on a week’s canoe trip 
and keep it dry and 
handy to use. For 
food sacks the stand- 
ard sack for bulk 
is 8 inches diameter 
by 10 inches depth 
and they cost fifteen 
cents each. To make 
them yourself, get 
from a sporting 
goods store two 
yards of paraffined 
muslin, cut out 8- 
inch round bottoms, 
and 10 X 24 - inch 
sides, sewing the 
sides around the bot- 
toms and turning in- 
side out. It can all 
be done on a domes- 
tic sewing machine 
using a heavy nee- 
dle and No. 40 cot- 
ton. Finish the food 
sacks with a foot of 
white tape sewed up near the top of 
the bag for a tie string. You will also 
need three plain rectangular 4 x 9-inch 
bags, and four small 3 x 6-inch bags 
of the same paraffined muslin. To make 
paraffined muslin yourself, buy the or- 
dinary unbleached muslin and steep 
in a mixture of a pint of turpentine with 
two bricks of paraffine dissolved in it. 
It will not dissolve cold but if your 
tin can of turpentine is warmed in a 
kettle of hot water it will dissolve the 
paraffine readily. Hang the muslin out 
to dry after soaking in the solution. 
The large food bags are to be marked 
Rice, Flour, Sugar, Oatmeal; the 9x4 
inches Com Meal, Prunes, Coffee, Pan- 
cake Flour; and the small 3x6 inches 
Tea, Cocoa, Salt, Raisins. Milk goes in 
its own cans of evaporated cream; eggs 
in a 3 X 5-inch tin can with friction top 
(holds 14 fresh eggs broken into it); 
potatoes and „nions in an ordinary mus- 
lin flour sack, meat, bacon, butter, etc., 
in 8-inch friction top tin cans costing 
25 cents each, two will be plenty. All 
these provision bags except the spud 
sack will go in the side opening grub 
bag, will weigh all told for a week’s 
cruise about thirty pounds and make 
about 150 pounds of cooked food. Rain 
and spray, upsets and hard knocks will 
make no difference to the grub pile; it is 
the only way to stow and carry food 
in a canoe. 
T he cook kit to be taken along may 
be any of the well known outfits, 
such as the nesting aluminum set 
for four, the Forester, Stopple, etc., or 
it may be a plain set of nesting tin pails 
for 50 cents, three of them, one inside the 
other, a couple of fry pans and some 
7 X 2-inch tin mixing and baking pans. 
Each man has his individual table set, 
of knife fork and spoon, cup and nine- 
inch tin or aluminum plate, and you 
will want a wire grate and a folding 
reflector baker or an aluminum one with 
cover, on which a fire can be built like a 
Dutch oven. The wire grate should have 
a cloth bag to pack it in as it gets very 
sooty and will soon get the rest of the 
things in the canoe dirty if stowed un- 
covered. 
For a tent there are several special 
canoe types on the market, the Hudson 
Bay, Canoe Tent, and Forester being 
three types that have made good on 
long canoe trips where each night a new 
camp is made. You want something 
quickly and easily put up, with few pegs 
and few poles. Canoe cruise regulations 
call for a heavy meal at breakfast, an 
all-day paddle with a bite of lunch eaten 
in the canoe at mid-day, and a rousing 
feed at night. One usually looks out 
for a good site and a spring along about 
four o’clock, as camping and cooking 
after dark is a nuisance and takes away 
the pleasure of the cruise. Wherefore 
you want a tent that can be quickly put 
up almost anywhere. The Hudson’s Bay 
tent calls for a handy tree and a pair 
of shears (for it is too much to ask to 
expect two trees to grow just the right 
distance apart with a level bit of ground 
in between them) . The Canoe tent needs 
one short po’e and two long rear stakes, 
and the Forester three ten-foot saplings. 
These are easy to find in any thicket 
along a lake or stream bank. All three 
tents take eight to 
ten short pegs and 
are put up in ten to 
fifteen minutes’ time. 
Never pitch on a 
sloping ground site 
unless the slope runs 
from head to foot of 
the tent; a side slope 
is very uncomfort- 
able to sleep on, and 
the man farthest up- 
hill will be continu- 
ally rolling down on 
the others in his 
sleep. 0 n e of the 
party puts up the 
tent, while the oth- 
ers get night wood, 
water for the cookee, 
and browse for the 
tent bottoms. 
The man elected 
(continued on 
PAGE 433) 
A well chosen camp site adds much to the enjoyment of the trip 
