950 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Here Is a Method Which Combines the Tump 
Line and the Pack Sack. 
These bags, “duffers’ bags,” the guides of this 
region have rechristened them, appear to be about 
as far as the imaginations of many outfitters get. 
They are fine articles, as far as they go. I have 
left mine, filled with grub, lying all day in the 
canoe as we paddled in the rain yet my sugar 
came from its special paraffined inner bag per¬ 
fectly dry at night. They are compact, durable 
and stow well in the canoe. As canoe seats they 
are superior to the cane affairs wished on that 
craft by the pale-face plagarists who emit these 
excellent canvas imitations of and improvements 
on the redman’s birch bark. 
Many of them have “grip sack” handles on 
the side. Carry ’em in your hand, like a suit 
case. The only difficulty is that a man would 
need four or five hands to get his share of an 
outfit so packed over the portage in one trip. 
Of course these bags are designed to be car¬ 
ried with a tump-line, but I have encountered at 
least one party simply snowed under with duffle 
bags, not one of whom had ever heard of this 
contrivance. 
The Indian uses an empty flour sack as a duf¬ 
fle bag. Then he unwinds the gaudy silk-knit 
sash from his waist, knots the ends thereof 
around his flour sack, each a little inboard from 
one extremity of the same, leaving a loop about 
eighteen inches long and eight wide. The top 
of this loop goes across the Indian’s head, just 
above the normal hair-line, suspending the sack 
horizontally across his back at about belt-level. 
Upon the sack, so suspended, the Indian piles 
other sacks—and things—until the whole load is 
level with the top of his head. Then he bends 
sightly forward from the hips and strolls casu¬ 
ally over the portage while his wife trudges along 
behind with the canoe balanced on her head and 
the children skirmish beside the line of march, 
each lugging some household article proportioned 
to his strength. 
This is tump-line packing. It is unquestion¬ 
ably the best way of transporting a cargo of 
heavy bundles of unequal size and weight. 
Rather hard on untrained muscles at first, but 
easily learned. It has this great advantage, that 
the man walking under a tump-line pack is in¬ 
stantly and automatically divorced from his load 
if he falls down; and this marked disadvantage, 
that the load must be broken up for stowing in 
the canoe and then reassembled again for the 
next portage. 
It is, however, the only efficient method of 
packing duffle bags. Yet I have visited a good 
many stores which offered an extensive line of 
duffle bags where clerks and proprietor alike got 
wroth and intimated that I was kidding them 
when I asked to see their tump-lines. They had 
never heard of such a thing. 
But while the market is fairly supplied with 
the machinery for this form of packing, it is 
practically barren of the conveniences for the 
more civilized method of “packsacking.” 
The whole clutter of rucksacks, knapsacks, pack 
baskets and camp packs listed in the catalogues 
can be dismissed in a bunch with the condemna¬ 
tion that none of them is big enough to carry 
the necessaries of a dyspeptic canary bird on an 
over-night trip. A little less bad is the “pack 
harness.” Aside from the disadvantages of hav¬ 
ing to make up a bundle of belongings every 
morning and of spilling the whole clutter beside 
the trail every time you want to dig out a fresh 
roll of film or a new can of tobacco, they are 
cursed with a breast-strap to cinch across the 
chest—a thing which does not endear them to 
anyone whose experience includes a few experi¬ 
ments in falling on a side-hill carry under a sev¬ 
enty pound load. 
The tump-line won its popularity in the days 
of the fur brigade, when a few men had to take 
out many packets of fur and bring in a year’s 
supplies. For this work a carrying device which 
could be used in turn on many separate bundles 
of varying bulk and shape was, and is yet, the 
proper thing. 
But the men who prospected the same country 
for minerals, lands and lumber were confronted 
with a different problem. They had a small, 
fixed outfit of equipment and supplies which they 
wished to keep assembled in accessible packages 
which could be yanked out of the canoe for the 
portage and tossed back again on embarkation 
without the delay of adjusting and detaching any 
carrying contrivance. 
So they gradually evolved a sack, 30 by 30 
inches square at its largest, closed by a buckled 
flap which could be opened when any particular 
article was desired, and capable of containing 
tea, blankets, food, cooking kit, axe, gun and 
everything else they desired to carry. The great 
talking point of the duffle bag, that it will keep 
its contents dry should the canoe swamp or up¬ 
set, would have carried no weight with them— 
for they neither intended or expected to let their 
canoe do either; if they did, they were game to 
pay the price of their incompetence. 
In order to carry this sack they attached to 
it shoulder straps of the type happily dubbed 
“center-fire” by a recent writer. Starting from 
a common point of attachment between the 
shoulders they passed over the heavy muscles 
close to the neck and hung there without any 
need of crossing them over the chest or using 
a breast strap to keep them from spreading. In 
addition to these they attached a “head strap,” 
an adaptation of the tump-line, which could be 
used either as the sole suspension of the pack 
when traversing dangerous footing or to make 
the neck muscles supplement the work of the 
shoulders on ordinary carries. 
In practice, when a larger outfit than could' 
be contained in one packsack was required or 
when freighting in supplies, they simply resorted 
to the Indian’s trick with the tump-line and 
piled other packs on top of the first one. 
On a canoe trip made last fall, with one com¬ 
panion, I was able to hold the outfit down to 
the following items: One large packsack con¬ 
taining tent, cold weather bedding and other 
bulky articles weighing about fifty-five pounds 
all told; one smaller packsack containing articles 
such as the cooking kit, fishing tackle, camera, 
gun, axe, and other things likely to be called into 
service during the day, weight about thirty 
pounds; one 10 by 24 inch duffle bag with fitted 
waterproof ration bags into which our food was 
assorted, weight, thirty pounds. 
On the portage I would take the lighter pack- 
sack and the canoe, which, with its yoke and 
paddles, weighed eighty-nine pounds, while my 
companion would swing up the big packsack and 
toss the grub sack on top of it. In this way we 
cleaned up everything with one trip over the 
portage and had but three bundles to stow into 
the canoe. 
Each part of the country has its own favored 
system of packing. In the canoe country of the 
East, both in the United States and Canada, the 
tump-line is the approved method though some 
parts of the Adirondacks, I am informed, are 
still cursed with the pack-basket. 
In general it is the wiser rule to favor a few 
large packs rather than a lot of small ones as 
making for greater dispatch on the portage, the 
place whfere time is gained or lost in canoe travel. 
In no case should a man take anything along 
on a canoe trip unless a method of packing it 
which fits in with the general scheme of trans¬ 
portation has been worked out and the proper 
device for applying it provided. 
A man on the portage wants his load settled 
squarely on his back and his hands free; do-dads 
to be carried in one hand or dangled from a 
shoulder strap may look all right in the store, 
but they are just the petty annoyances which, 
rather than hard work and real hardships, take 
the pleasure out of a canoe trip. 
