To make a comfortable bush bedplace, take four forked posts about 3 ft. 6 in. long and 2 to 3 in. in diameter at the top; mark out your bedplace accurately and put a post at each corner, about 1 ft. in the ground. Take two poles about 7 ft. long, and having procured two strong five-bushel corn sacks, cut holes in the bottom corners, put the poles through, bringing the mouths of the sacks together, and secure them there with a strong stitch or two. Put your poles on the upright forked sticks, and you have a couch that even Sancho Panza would have envied. It is as well to fix stretchers or cross stays between the posts at head and foot.
In malarial countries, sleeping on the ground is distinctly dangerous, and as such districts are usually thickly timbered, the Northern Territory hammock is an admirable device, more particularly where mosquitoes abound.
NORTHERN TERRITORY HAMMOCK
This hammock, which is almost a standing bedplace when rigged, is constructed as follows:—To a piece of strong canvas 7 feet long and 2 1/2 feet wide, put a broad hem, say 3 1/2 inches wide at each end. Into this hem run a rough stick, about 2 feet 8 inches by 2 inches diameter. Round the centre of the stick pass a piece of strong three-quarter inch rope, 8 to 10 feet long and knot it, so as to leave a short end in which a metal eye is inserted. To each end of the two sticks a piece of quarter-inch lashing, about 6 feet long, is securely attached.
To make the mosquito covering take 18 feet of ordinary strong cheese cloth, and two pieces of strong calico of the same size as the canvas bed; put hems in the ends of the upper one large enough to take half-inch sticks, to all four extremities of which 8 feet of whipcord is to be attached. The calico forms the top and bottom of what we used to call the "meat safe," the sides being of cheese cloth. A small, flapped opening is left on the lower side. When once inside you are quite safe from mosquito bites.
To rig the above, two trees are chosen 7 to 8 feet apart, or two stayed poles can be erected if no trees are available. The bed is rigged about 3 feet from the ground by taking the rope round the trees or poles, and pulling the canvas taut by means of the metal eyelet. Then the lashings at the extremities of the sticks are fixed about 3 feet further up the trees and you have a bed something between a hammock and a standing bed. The mosquito net is fixed above the hammock in a similar manner, except that it does not require the centre stay.
An old friend of mine once had a rather startling experience which caused him to swear by the Northern Territory hammock. He was camped near the banks of a muddy creek on the Daly River, and had fortunately hung his "meat safe" about four feet high. The night was very dark, and some hours after retiring he heard a crash among his tin camp utensils, and the noise of some animal moving below him. Thinking his visitor was a stray "dingo," or wild dog, he gave a yell to frighten the brute away, and hearing it go, he calmly went to sleep again. Had he known who his caller really was, he would not have felt so comfortable. In the morning on the damp ground below, he found the tracks of a fourteen foot alligator, which was also out prospecting, but which, fortunately, had not thought of investigating the "meat safe."
PURIFYING WATER
There is not a more fertile disease distributor, particularly in a new country, than water. The uninitiated generally take it for granted that so long as water looks clear it is necessarily pure and wholesome; as a matter of fact the contrary is more usually the case, except in very well watered countries, and such, as a rule, are not those in which gold is most plentifully got by the average prospector. I have seen foolish fellows, who were parched with a long tramp, drink water in quantity in which living organisms could be seen with the naked eye, without taking even the ordinary precaution of straining it through a piece of linen. If they contracted hydatids, typhoid fever, or other ailments, which thin our mining camps of the strong, lusty, careless youths, who could wonder?
The best of all means of purifying water from organic substances is to boil it. If it be very bad, add carbon in the form of the charcoal from your camp fire. If it be thick, you may, with advantage, add a little of the ash also.