The most necessary tools are an axe, a hatchet, one of Aiken’s patent diminutive awl tool-chests, with which to mend broken rods, needles and thread to mend torn clothes, some rosin to mend the canoes, and a supply of various sizes of nails for numerous purposes, while a file and sharpening stone will be found useful additions. An india-rubber water-proof bag is admirable as a receptacle for clothes or blankets, which should be heavy, and a tin wash-basin and an air-pillow will be great additional comforts. Fresh eggs may be conveniently stowed in the barrels of coarse salt used for curing fish.
Of the foregoing there are none you can comfortably omit, and besides them there are plenty you would do well to have; but the judgment and taste of each individual will suggest the additions.
As one of the first objects will be to preserve the fish you catch, a preparation of eight ounces of sugar, two ounces of salt, half an ounce of brown pepper, well rubbed into fish from which the back bone has been removed, and which are allowed to dry in the sun, will preserve them over a month. They should be packed in barrels with layers of bark between, and will prove more edible than when simply smoked; by smoking they may be kept for years, and the fisherman long have the proud pleasure of offering to friend at breakfast a little of the salmon he killed and smoked himself the previous Summer in Canada.
In warm weather, fish merely salted cannot be kept long, and pickling in brine utterly destroys their flavor; but if the latter method must be adopted, a pickle of two parts salt and one part common brown sugar will keep them forever. Before cooking, however, they should be well soaked. Pickling in vinegar with a few cloves is probably the best mode where it is possible.
The gum for mending the canoes—and it is surprising how large a hole it will fill—is made of one part rosin to three parts balsam gum, fused together. If the aperture is very extensive, a piece of linen saturated with melted gum should be applied. In New Brunswick and Maine it is usual to mix rosin and grease, which answers every purpose.
To smoke fish, it is necessary to salt them in a tub, where they can form a brine, and leave them thus for two days, and then hang them in a smoke-house, not too near the fire, for as many weeks, when they are to be packed in layers, separate. Fish are soused by being partially boiled, and having vinegar boiled in copper kettles mixed with allspice and poured over them. Iron turns the vinegar black, and hence this mode cannot be pursued in the woods. Small fish may be headed, cleaned and packed in a jar, which is then filled up with vinegar and allspice and baked all night. Next day fresh vinegar is added to make up for the evaporation, and lard is run in to exclude the air. They keep well and taste excellent.
An air-tight can is now made, with a cover that fits into a trough which can be filled with melted rosin. This may be used over and over again, and is peculiarly adapted to the woods. It must be hermetically sealed while the contents are boiling, but without sealing might be advantageously used to protect sugar and such things from the wet. The same cover is applied to brown earthen jars, which are well suited for carrying butter.
Literature will be found a great resource in the woods, and although Harper’s last Monthly may be permissible on account of the shortness of its stories, nothing should be taken of too interesting a character, lest it divert attention from the main object in view. This work will be found extremely safe.
In giving the foregoing directions it is assumed that the reader intends to travel with canoes, and does not expect to make any extensive portages, or, as they are called in American, “carries;” for if the men are expected to back the traps for any considerable distance, the only admissible articles are fishing-tackle, penny-royal, an axe, the tents, pork, ship biscuit, tea, sugar, pepper, salt, tea-kettle, matches and a frying-pan. The slightest weight becomes a mountain on such occasions, and it will require stout muscles to carry enough for their own sustenance. In salmon-fishing this is rarely necessary, unless a man would be an explorer, and the adventurous are always sufferers.
As it is possible none of my reader’s female acquaintance have ever soiled their rosy fingers—Heaven save the mark!—with domestic cookery, an outline of the theory of that science may be advantageous. There are certain well known rules that have no exceptions, unless in the hands of a genius, and which apply to classes and divisions of edibles. For instance, a little salt must always be thrown into the water before anything is boiled in it. Thus, again, with the great class of fried cakes: milk thickened with flour, and an egg or two, and a pinch of salt, makes griddle: add squash, boiled and mashed, and you have squash cakes; employ boiled and mashed rice in place of squash, and there is produced the delicate rice cake; introduce Indian-meal, which has been first scalded, and you have Indian cakes. This class of cakes is made by pouring the preparation, in large tablespoonfuls at a time, on a greased griddle or frying-pan. In broiling, frying, roasting, baking, or stewing, salt and pepper are first rubbed on the article to be cooked; in broiling, baking, or roasting, it is basted with butter or grease, and in frying the butter is first put in the pan and heated. Potatoes boiled, and cut thin when cold, are delicious fried. In stewing, a little water is poured over the meat, and the cooking is done with a cover on.