Nov. 16, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
619 
TWO FROM NEW BERN, N. C. 
Hints for Campers. 
Beds: First on the list comes the old-time 
bed of balsam browse. If you have faithful 
guides and camp in a balsam or hemlock 
region, it makes a fair bed. But it requires an 
hour’s time to make it and requires rebuilding 
every day. It is surprising how the brows?, 
will pack under the weight of your body. 
This can be lessened to a great extent by first 
building a spring mattress of hemlock branches 
(not browse) laid crosswise with the butts out¬ 
side and the feather in the middle, and then 
build the browse bed on the branches. Your 
guide may kick because it is not according to 
Indian usage; but you can tell him that many 
old campers have built beds in this way, al¬ 
though few have written about it. 
A canoeist does not have to make his bed 
every night. Frazier’s cork cushion bed can¬ 
not be surpassed. But two cushions, each three 
feet long, eighteen inches wide, and three or 
four inches thick, are better than one. If you 
have your camp furnisher make them, give him 
very positive directions not to pack the cork 
tightly. He will try to give you your money's 
worth of cork and you will wonder why any 
one ever recommended cork cushions. These 
cushions serve as a floor to your canoe, as a 
seat, and as a bed. They are light, and it does 
notmatter if they get wet. as they quickly dry 
out, and your waterproof sheet will take care of 
that. And speaking of waterproof sheets, I do 
not mean a rubber blanket, but one made of 
waterproof balloon cloth. 
Rope mattresses are made of two logs 
with pegs driven in auger holes and rope laced 
between them. They do' not appeal to me as I 
do not take an auger to the woods. I have 
never tried them, but I think a canvas stretcher 
bed would be far better. 
Canvas stretcher beds cannot always be 
rigged for lack of suitable poles or logs, and 
the poles generally do not fit well in the tent. 
I have one. I tried to use it once. It makes a 
very good floor for my tent. 
Folding cots are a luxury, the catalogue 
says, but on ordinary trips we leave luxuries at 
home. On a wagon trip to a permanent camp 
they are all right if properly used. Kephart 
says they are like a pine board, and he is right. 
He suggests the use of a quilt; but a quilt 
will not remove the trouble. A much better 
plan is to build a mattress of branches and 
browse or leaves, at least six inches thick, on 
top of the cot. So used, a folding cot affords 
a most luxuriant bed, the best I have ever slept 
on in camp. But a folding cot weighs sixteen 
pounds, and, excepting on a wagon trip, is, 
for me at least, a burden not to be thought 
of. 
Hammocks are very nice for an afternoon 
siesta, but hardly all that you could wish for as 
a bed in camp. 
And now, where is the bed perfect for all 
purposes? I have not found it. So far as canoe¬ 
ing and a permanent camp are concerned, the 
cork cushions and the folding cot with its spring 
mattress of branches are good enough. 
As to a canvas bag filled with browse or 
leaves, my experience has been that it makes 
you tired to fill it properly, and it makes you 
tired the next morning if it be not properly 
filled. Lorna. 
New Publications. 
The Complete Wildfowler, Ashore and 
Afloat. By Stanley Duncan and Guy 
Thorne. Illustrated, $375 net. Outing Pub¬ 
lishing Co., New York. 
To paraphrase the revered W. S., a good 
book needs no prologue. This book has one 
which explains in effect why the work was not 
called the wet nurse to English wildfowlers, 
for it is that in everything but title. If the 
composition did not cost $375, the book could 
be passed by with this suggestion: If you build 
your library from the viewpoint of artistically 
bound books, with comprehensive titles, you 
should by all means have a place made for this 
book. If, however, as is the case with most of 
us, your sportsman's library is selected for ser¬ 
vice, you do not want this collaboration. The 
sportsman who prides himself upon his knowl¬ 
edge of dog, gun and birds will mentally fight his 
way through the “Wildfowler,” for its authors 
are imbued with the conviction that no one treats 
a gun properly, wears the right sort of shooting 
clothes, and that every reader has an insane de¬ 
sire to cross breed shooting dogs, which inci¬ 
dentally is about the last thing a bird hunter 
would think of. Even a bad boy with a good 
gun couldn’t spoil it in the padded cell archi¬ 
tecture of Mr. Thorne’s ginger bread gun room. 
Our old friend Iviffe will, for twelve dollars, give 
us a gun cabinet in which may safely be racked 
the best friend in the gun line we ever had. 
Our further criticism of the “Complete Wild¬ 
fowler” is its title, which is an absolute misnomer 
as far as American wildfowl shooting is con¬ 
cerned, for there is not in the entire 360 pages 
a single bit of information helpful to the wild¬ 
fowl shooter on this side of the Atlantic, where 
punt guns are outlawed and where guns of cali¬ 
bers from 2 to 10 are things of the past, hav¬ 
ing been superseded by 12’s and 16’s because the 
American sportsman shoots for fun and not for 
feathers. 
Says I to myself, 
Says I, 
Forest and Stream’s the paper to buy, 
Says I. 
How about sending us a card with the name 
of a friend who would like a sample copy? 
