FOREST AND STREAM 
527 
Fortuitous Foods and Footwear 
Things Unique In Camper’s Commissary 
The three f’s in camping—food, fuel, and foot¬ 
wear—furnish material for a volume. Then, 
again, the kinks can be condensed into a couple 
of colums or so—leaving the reader to supply 
all the “padding” from his own stock of in- 
rormation called “experience.” The present 
chapter notes on two of the f’s—food and foot¬ 
wear; fuel for emergencies (with none in sight 
—apparently) may come later. 
* * * 
From time to time we read of woods-lost 
campers who have existed for days on berries 
and herbs. With a little know-how, they might 
have had a better menu. The tramping or wan¬ 
dering “larder” could have been enlarged by 
snails, frogs’-legs, tipes of fungi, etc. The 
alpinists of Europe understand all these edibil¬ 
ities, and we never read of them starving to 
death. Yet a straying city man in our Maine 
woods is liable to perish of malnutrition with 
abundance around him! Yet he could easily 
learn from the foreign colonies in all our large 
cities about the makeshift foods he could find 
amid the wildest surroundings. 
Take, for instance, the food-substitutes resort¬ 
ed to, when pinched, of those all-too-numerous 
body of Italian pot-shotters who are ever an 
anon in trouble with our game-wardens. When 
the risk of securing game in the closed season 
is too onerous, or the wardens too alert, they 
try pot-luck at another kind of “game” for the 
Manhattan market—besides it keeping them in 
food for the time being. They gather up snails 
by the bushel; string together and air-dry heaps 
upon heaps of frogs’-legs; and quantities of 
other “unconsidered trifles” which the average 
American beef-'steaker would never dream of 
making a meal on. 
This queer outdoor produce can daily be seen 
for sale around Mulberry-plaza region, Man¬ 
hattan: so that the dago poacher, when he can’t 
get inhibited game, makes “good” on this small 
fry. The Italian paunch being a queer one, there 
is always a market for this otherwise overlooked 
small life of the wild. 
Earth-worms are more or less plentiful in 
all regions where moisture prevails, and when 
braized in oil they make a tasty-enuf dish. Try 
them sometime!—get your “tummi” in on ’em 
in case of fortuitous circumstances? You can 
obtain them in most foreign grocery stores in 
our chiefer villes in i-lb. cans, already cooked 
in grease, at about $% per. 
There are plenty of edible sea-weeds and tree- 
piths. Dulse is one of them. Dried, it is a pur¬ 
ple or bricki^h red, and imparts to the most 
“uninteresting” soup a delektable clam-broth 
flavor. 
Razor-clams and mussels should not be 
neglected by the wayward camper when in their 
vicinity. They are eaten raw by fishermen, with 
a hunk of bread, making a good-enuf meal— 
and what they can eat, the hungry out-door-lifer 
can, too! 
* * # 
In camping-foods, it is always advisable to 
carry articles which, in case of a fire being im¬ 
practicable, can be eaten as they are. Thus, 
the naturelly-“caking” sweet chestnut-flour is a 
By L. Lodian. 
delektable food just as it is—the only flour ex¬ 
tant which is habitually eaten uncooked (in 
Italia, usually stirred into a bowl of cold milk). 
Dried egg in flake-form is better than the 
powdered egg, because being less messy, and 
better adapted to the salivary secretions. Dried 
cream—1 don’t mean dried whole-milk: latter 
contains 28 per cent, butterfat; former 63 per 
cent.—is exceeding sustaining, and can be eaten 
dry as it is, or water-added. I have often hand- 
churned pure sweet butter from it; and also 
ripened a first-class cheese from it, without add¬ 
ing a particle of foreign substance like salt or 
anything else. That shack-made cheese from 
the up-State-made dried cream was superior— 
because I know of its purity—to any kamembert 
or salt-doped roquefort or brie or Cheshire or 
swiss cheeses. 
In going over camping-books, all food-lists 
instance beans! They are not worth carrying: 
I never troubled to include them in my life- 
More “wind” than work in them! Army hard¬ 
tack biscuits are incomparably superior, as they 
can be eaten any time as they are; whereas beans 
require a fire, and prolonged cooking. Even 
cooked canned beans are inferior to hard-tack 
bread. The fact is, beans have been altogether 
too much “cracked up,” whereas they are largely 
what the galiks term a vol de vent (windy fraud). 
Over a year ago were illus-scribed the alpa- 
gata or rope-sole shoes of the Arabic-convers- 
ing countries (also prevalent in Iberia). This 
led to a few inquiries from diverse parts of the 
Union. We now show the same shoes after 
over a 1000 miles of walking in them, thru all 
kinds of weather—snow and slush, mud and 
flood, “from summer’s heat to winter's chill.” 
As then related, the alpagata uppers—if any¬ 
thing “goes”—“go” first. It is in this regard 
that the alpagata differs from the leather shoe— 
the soles of which of course always “go” first. 
The used pair which have been turned into 
the office of this journal for “camera-effects,” 
apparently look quite dilapidated after their ag¬ 
gregate of a ten-hundred-mile stunt, yet the 
soles remain as thick and solid-looking almost 
as when new. Putting them in a tub of water 
overnight; giving them in the morning a few 
whisks around with a broom; sun-drying them 
on the flat roof:—all this makes the shoe and 
sole-surface passably clean, and permits a satis¬ 
factory examination of the sole, to ascertain the 
secret of its wear-resisting nature. 
This was hinted at in the previous article of 
over a year ago. The interstices of the rope- 
sole pick up and retain tiny stones and sandy 
particles, and these wear like nails. As these 
firmly-imbedded stony trifles wear away and fall 
out, they are “automatically” replaced by others 
■—it may be after a few days’, or weeks’, wear: 
it is all according to the wearer’s pedal activities. 
The shoe is literally, so to write, “self-soling.” 
The pair of well-“punished” specimens turned 
into Forest and Stream headquarters for por¬ 
trayal, plainly show the firmly-imbedded stony 
particles of diverse sizes which have been “auto¬ 
matically” picked up by the wearer's unconscious 
pressure when walking. 
The alpagata has been semi-poetically or fanci¬ 
fully termed “the shoe with the breathing sole.” 
It is true to an extent: walking therein is de¬ 
lightfully cool compared to the ordinary stuffy 
leather shoe;—and prolonged heated feet in the 
nigh-impervious leather footgear is, in warm 
spells, sufficient to produce lassitude—and even 
distress—in the most energetic will-power walk¬ 
ers. In fact, hot feet enervate the whole body in 
summer temperatures- 
You can quickly find out the truth of this by 
a little experiment anytime if walking a sandy 
sea-shore, or a quiet stretch of well-made coun¬ 
try road, by removing the hot shoes and walking 
barefooted for a time—that is, if your feet are 
hardened to walking on a sandy road. The 
change to barefootedness is one of the most 
delightful reliefs I know of in this world. All 
