Also on the crossbar in the sketch you see our tongs. These are most useful things for a camp-fire for lifting hot embers into the spot where you want them for giving extra heat.
[Illustration: MY AUTOMATIC KETTLE-HOLDER.]
The tongs are made from a green stick of hazel, or alder, or birch. The stick should be about 2 1/2 to 3 feet long. At the middle you cut away a good bit of the wood from one side for about 4 inches. Then cut a number of small notches across the grain of the wood to make it still more bendable at the centre. Here's the side view of the centre part of your stick.
[Illustration: THE TONGS BEFORE AND AFTER BEING BENT.]
Then flatten the inner sides of your stick towards both ends, so that they get a better hold on things; bend the two ends together and there you have your tongs:
Next to the tongs, in the sketch, you see a small branch of dwarf fir. This makes a hearth-brush, which is very useful for keeping the fire neat and clean.
The ordinary-looking stick leaning against the crossbar is an ordinary sort of stick, but a very useful one. He is the poker and pot-lifter. He should be a stout green stick not easily burnt. Poplar is a difficult wood to burn, but then many old hands won't use it, because it is said to bring bad luck on the camp-fire where it is used; but that is an old wife's story, and I always use it when I get the chance.
If the soup gets upset, I look on it as my fault, not the fault of the poplar poker. In fact, whatever wood the poker is made of, one always seems to get a kind of affection for him. He is only an ordinary ugly, old half-burnt stick, but he is jolly useful and helpful.
On this side of the fire you see the pile of wood that has been collected for fuel. It is generally the right thing when in camp for each camper, when coming in, whether from bathing, or fishing, or anywhere else, to bring with him some contribution to the wood-pile.
Different kinds of wood are needed for it.