My wife, like a good Scout, kept everything very clean in camp, and our joke was that whenever there was a moment to spare she would set to work to scrub the saucepan. That seemed to be her favourite job, using a handful of sand and a twist of coarse grass, and the result was a bright, clean saucepan in which to cook our food.
A good deal of sickness comes in camps when dirty saucepans are used.
When she was not cleaning the saucepan her other spare minutes were spent in cleaning up the camp ground, and burning all scraps.
One morning when doing this she made the great discovery. It was this—how to make toast without a good fire. She had wrapped some unused slices of bread in some waste paper, and put the whole lot among the ashes of our palm-leaf fire in order to burn them.
The paper gradually charred and burnt itself away, and left the bread behind it nicely roasted into crisp brown toast!
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TRUFFLE HUNTING.
Another tip which we learnt in camp was how to find truffles. These are a kind of root akin to a mushroom, which grow entirely underground. They are very nice to eat, and command a good price in the market.
In France the people find them with pigs; the pigs are able to scent them, and proceed to root them up with their snouts, when the man steps in and collars the truffle.
The Arabs showed us how to find them on the desert, where they are quite plentiful.