“If either of you had wanted tea, Aleck would have put in the pot a teaspoonful of tea leaves for each cup to be made, poured boiling water over it, let it stand in a warm place two or three minutes, and it would have been ready for you.
“Here you have a plain, easily cooked dinner of fried fish, boiled potatoes, and coffee, to which you can add from your supplies bread and butter, or crackers, pickles, condensed milk, salt, pepper, and sugar. I think you will find it enough for a first experiment.
“For breakfast next morning you will have coffee, fried potatoes and breakfast bacon, and griddle-cakes.”
“Oh, Uncle Harry, I can’t make griddle-cakes,” exclaimed Aleck.
“I think you can, if I tell you how, and you try hard. At any rate, you had better try, for they enter largely into the composition of camp meals. To make the simplest flour griddle-cakes, put into a pan a quart of your prepared flour, a teaspoonful of salt, a handful of corn-meal, a table-spoonful of brown sugar, two eggs, if you have them, and mix with cold water into a batter. Stir thoroughly until no lumps are left, and then fry on a hot griddle. In frying use as little grease as possible. More griddle-cakes are spoiled by the use of too much grease in frying than in any other way. A bit of pork rind or an oiled rag rubbed over the griddle is sufficient. Take turns in frying the cakes, so that two of you can be eating them as fast as they are done. They are only fit to eat when hot from the griddle.
“The cold boiled potatoes left from dinner the night before may be cut up and fried with half a dozen slices of breakfast bacon, and when all is ready you will have a breakfast to which I think three hungry boys will do ample justice.
“When you become tired of fish, catch frogs. They are considered delicacies on first-class tables, and add a pleasant variety to a woodman’s fare. Catch them with a light rod, short line, and small hook baited with a bit of scarlet flannel, or at night by use of a jack-light. Stupefied by its glare, they will let you pick them up. Kill your frog by a tap on the head, cut off his thighs and hind-legs, skin them, roll them in Indian-meal, and fry brown in hot oil or pork fat.
“You will also probably have an opportunity of adding squirrels to your bill of fare. When you have got your squirrel, chop off his head, feet, and tail, cut the skin crosswise of the back, and strip it off in two parts, fore and aft; also cut the body crosswise into two parts. Throw them into a kettle, and let the hind-quarters parboil until tender. Then fry them, until of a rich brown, in oil or pork fat, hissing hot. Use the fore-quarters for a stew.
“To make a stew use almost any kind of flesh or fowl. The chief thing to be remembered in making a stew is to stew it enough. An old camp jingle runs thus:
“‘A stew that’s too little stewed