How to Camp Out

E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)


First published in 1877


In these few pages I have tried to prepare something about camping and walking, such as I should have enjoyed reading when I was a boy; and, with this thought in my mind, I some years ago began to collect the subject-matter for a book of this kind, by jotting down all questions about camping, &c., that my young friends asked me. I have also taken pains, when I have been off on a walk, or have been camping, to notice the parties of campers and trampers that I have chanced to meet, and have made a note of their failures or success. The experiences of the pleasant days when, in my teens, I climbed the mountains of Oxford County, or sailed through Casco Bay, have added largely to the stock of notes; and finally the diaries of the war, and the recollections of the field, have contributed generously; so that, with quotations, and some help from other sources, a sizable volume is ready.
Although it is prepared for young men,—for students more especially,—it contains much, I trust, that will prove valuable to campers-out in general.
I am under obligations to Dr. Elliott Coues, of the United States Army, for the valuable advice contained in Chapter XIII.; and I esteem it a piece of good fortune that his excellent work ( Field Ornithology ) should have been published before this effort of mine, for I hardly know where else I could have found the information with authority so unquestionable.
Prof. Edward S. Morse has increased the debt of gratitude I already owe him, by taking his precious time to draw my illustrations, and prepare them for the engraver.
Mr. J. Edward Fickett of Portland, a sailmaker, and formerly of the navy, has assisted in the chapter upon tents; and there are numbers of my young friends who will recognize the results of their experience, as they read these pages, and will please to receive my thanks for making them known to me.