HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS.
PRACTICES.
Practise roping scouts together for mountain climbing. Practise (if boats available) coming alongside, making fast, sculling, punting, laying oars, coiling ropes, etc., and other details of boat management. Read barometer.
GAMES IN LIFE IN THE OPEN.
Night Patrolling.
Practise scouts to hear and see by night by posting some sentries, who must stand or walk about, armed with rifles and blank cartridges, or with whistles. Other scouts should be sent out as enemies to stalk and kill them. If a sentry hears a sound he fires, calls, or whistles. Scouts must at once halt and lie still. The umpire comes to the sentry and asks which direction the sound came from, and, if correct, the sentry wins. If the stalker can creep up within 15 yards of the sentry without being seen, he deposits some article, such as a handkerchief, on the ground at that point, and creeps away again. Then he makes a noise for the sentry to fire at, and when the umpire comes up, he can explain what he has done.
GAMES.
A Whale Hunt.
The whale is made of a big log of wood with a roughly shaped head and tail to represent a whale. Two boats will usually carry out the whale hunt, each boat manned by one patrol—the patrol leader acting as captain, the corporal as bowman or harpooner, the remainder of the patrol as oarsmen. Each boat belongs to a different harbour, the two harbours being about a mile apart. The umpire takes the whale and lets it loose about halfway between the two harbours, and on a given signal, the two boats race out to see who can get to the whale first. The harpooner who first arrives within range of the whale drives his harpoon into it, and the boat promptly turns round and tows the whale to its harbour. The second boat pursues, and when it overtakes the other, also harpoons the whale, turns round, and endeavours to tow the whale back to its harbour. In this way the two boats have a tug-of-war, and eventually the better boat tows the whale, and, possibly, the opposing boat into its harbour. It will be found that discipline and strict silence and attention to the captain's orders are very strong points towards winning the game. It shows, above all things, the value of discipline. The game is similar to one described in E. Thompson Seton's "Birchbark of the Woodcraft Indians."
