On the Trail: An Outdoor Book for Girls

by Lina Beard; Adelia B. Beard

With a slender pole as a handle, hickory shoots, or twisted fibre of inner bark of slippery-elm, for twine, and a thick bunch of the top branchlets of balsam, spruce, hemlock, or pine for the brush part, you can make a broom by binding the heavy ends of the branches tight to an encircling groove cut on the handle some three inches from the end. Cut the bottom of the brush even and straight.

Camp-Chair

If you have a good-size length of canvas or other strong cloth, make a camp-chair. For the back use two strong, forked stakes standing upright, and use two long poles with branching stubs at equal distance from the bottom, for the sides and front legs of the chair; in the crotches of these stubs the bottom stick on which the canvas strip is fastened will rest.

Each side pole must be fitted into one of the forked high-back stakes, and then the top stick on the canvas strip must be placed in the same crotches, but in front of and resting against the side poles, thus locking the side poles firmly in place.

To fasten the canvas on the two sticks, cut one stick to fit across the chair-back and the other to fit across the lower front stubs. Fold one end of the canvas strip over one stick and nail the canvas on it, so arranging the cloth that the row of nails will come on the under side of the stick. Turn in the edge first that the nails may go through the double thickness of cloth. Adjust this canvas-covered stick to the top of the chair, allowing the cloth to form a loose hanging seat; measure the length needed for back and seat, cut it off and nail the loose end of the canvas strip to the other stick; then fit one stick in the top of the upright back stakes and the other stick in the bottom stubs.

Camp Clothes-Press

If you are in a tent tie a hanging pole from the tent ridge-pole, and use it as a clothes-press.

Blanket Bed

Two short logs will be required for your blanket bed, the thicker the better, one for the head and one for the foot, also two long, strong, green-wood poles, one for each side of the bed; your blanket will be the mattress.

Fold the blanket, making the seam, formed by bringing the two ends together, run on the under-side along the centre of the doubled blanket, not on the edge. Lap and fasten the blanket ends together with large horse-blanket safety-pins, and with the same kind of pins make a case on each side of the blanket fold; then run one of the poles through each case. Chop a notch near each end of the two short logs; in these notches place the ends of the poles and nail them securely. Have the short logs thick enough to raise the bed up a few inches from the ground, and make the notches sufficiently far apart to stretch the mattress out smooth, not have it sag. A strip of canvas or khaki may be used in place of the blanket if preferred.