July 7, 1906 .1 
THE AUTHOR IN CAMP. 
back, he is ready to curse the country out, when 
it’s all his own fault. A Mexican peon or an 
Indian will travel clear across Mexico with only 
a small quantity of pinole to eat and his saddle 
blankets to sleep on. A mule will carry two 
hundred pounds; and one man with two mules 
properly packed can cross the continent and be 
almost as comfortable as at home. 
In selecting an outfit, the great consideration 
is lightness, compactness and durability; and this 
especially applies to your cooking outfit. The 
aluminum outfit sold by Abercrombie & Fitch is 
splendid. A small tent is a necessity, as is also 
a clothes bag. 
In packing provisions I use canvas ore sacks, 
and for bacon, an oilcloth sack. Food is the 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Two mules packed with my entire outfit, consisting of cooking outfit, tent, clothes bag, blankets, “tarp” folding 
cot, ammunition and provisions. 
most difficult thing to carry on a pack animal, as 
it will work out and get all over everything; but 
Abercrombie & Fitch have gotten out a can with 
screw cap, which solves this problem. 
Of wearing apparel, a man going out for a 
month’s trip will need a slouch hat, a khaki suit, 
a pair of overalls, a blue flannel shirt and a 
sweater, two suits of under clothes, a half-dozen 
pair of socks and two pair heavy shoes, besides a 
few toilet articles, all of which can be placed in 
an ore sack. If it be summer, a Gold Medal 
folding cot is nice, or an air mattress in winter, 
with sufficient blankets. A repair outfit, con¬ 
sisting of sack needles, twine, leather punches, 
shoemaker’s needles and thread, is a necessity. 
Of course, you will carry a rifle, six-shooter, 
hunting knife and field glasses; and in this day 
of outdoor travel no trip is complete without a 
camera, preferably a folding one. But if you 
value your peace of mind, don’t start out with a 
camera using plates. I tried it—once only. 
During nine weeks spent in the Sierra Madres 
last summer, during which I traveled on horseback 
some eight hundred miles, I learned much of the 
intricacies of camp life—little things that seem 
so insignificant to us as we sit in our city office 
and think it over; but when you get out a hun¬ 
dred miles from a settlement how very important 
do they seem! Then it is that you bless your 
forethought in providing for your trip properly. 
To me, a trip with pack animals over the big 
mountain ranges has a charm unequalled by any 
other mode of travel. It makes a man feel in¬ 
dependent ; he doesn’t care whether there is a 
road or not, nor does his comfort depend on 
reaching a ranch at night, for he carries with 
him everything he needs. 
Mexico is the land of muleback packing. 
Mines and even good sized towns depend solely 
on mules or burrows to carry in from the distant 
railroads everything they need; and it is sur¬ 
prising what they do carry in on a mule. I inclose 
a few snapshots of pack mules that I took while 
down in that section, which will, I think, be of 
interest to your readers. 
To the lover of camp life, I would say, take a 
pack mule trip in Mexico, by all manner of 
means; but if yOu are not a past-master in the 
art of packing and outfitting for such trips, then 
take along some one who is and follow his ad¬ 
vice to the letter, or else stay at home and go 
quail shooting. " J. J. Bush. 
How, Chief. 
Toledo, O., May 15.— When we meet an old 
friend in a new garb, we are prone to cry, “How 
fine you look" : but our pleasure comes from our 
recognition of the man underneath the clothes, 
rather than from the clothes themselves. And so 
when the Forest and Stream marches down 
across the country, like a chief on the warpath, 
decked in all the finery of fresh paint and feath¬ 
ers, we are pleased because we recognize beneath 
all the brave array of new apparel, the spirit, the 
entity that have made the paper what it is. 
Still, the new dress is handsome and attractive, 
and furnishes a most fitting costume for the stal¬ 
wart old war-chief we have all come to regard 
so highly. Jay Beebe. 
Pack train carrying freight to Baronca de Cabre mine, one hundred miles from 
railroad. The mule in center of picture is carrying two large trunks full of 
dry goods. 
FREIGHTERS. 
