BOOKS ON CAMPAIGNING.
CHAPTER IV.
CAMP LIFE.
CAMP FIRE YARN.—No. 11.
PIONEERING.
Knot-tying—Hutmaking—Felling Trees—Bridging—Measurements—Handicrafts.
Pioneers are men who go ahead to open up a way in the jungles or elsewhere for those coming after them.
When I was on service on the West Coast of Africa I had command of a large force of native scouts, and, like all scouts, we tried to make ourselves useful in every way to our main army. So not only did we look out for the enemy and watch his moves, but we also did what we could to improve the road for our own army, since it was merely a narrow track through thick jungle and swamps. That is, we became pioneers as well as scouts. In the course of our march, we built nearly two hundred bridges of timber over streams. But when I first set the scouts to do this most important work I found that, out of the thousand men, a great many did not know how to use an axe to cut down the trees, and, except one company of about sixty men, none knew how to make knots—even bad knots. So they were quite useless for building bridges, as this had to be done by tying poles together.
So every scout ought to be able to tie knots.
To tie a knot seems to be a simple thing, and yet there are right ways and wrong ways of doing it, and scouts ought to know the right way. Very often it may happen that lives depend on a knot being properly tied.
The right kind of knot to tie is one which you can be certain will hold under any amount of strain, and which you can always undo easily if you wish to.
