As regards mere comfort, much may be done if there is time. You can make yourself a mattress of wild flowers, and wallow like a tramp in clover. You can pile up dried weeds under you. You can improve on your pillow, smooth down your lonely pillow, in fact. You can ingeniously use various contents of your knapsack to give more warmth or softness. Those who feel the cold can put in hot rocks.
The hot rock is a cowboy device. You take some fair-sized stones, heat them in your camp fire, then wrap them up in whatever comes handy and place at the foot of the bed—this gives a sort of hot-water bottle. When tramping in high mountains you almost inevitably approach the snow line at times, and it is cold even in July. The hot rocks come in useful. Personally, I do not feel cold much, but I have tried hot rocks and have been surprised to realize that they retain their warmth even till morning. Their chief drawback is the scorch they may give you if by chance you undo the wrapping and put your leg on a naked stone. Some walkers get so enamored of hot rocks that they will sleep hugging a big one to their bosom.
Of course, one soon discovers that a night in the shelter of a great rock is warmer than a night in the unprotected open, and a night in a cave warmer even than that. Caves facing westward over the sea keep the sun low in them all night; caves on the western sides of mountains do the same. But this does not apply to profound caves which may be very cool. A night in a cave is an adventure, but it is likely to be less pleasant than a night outside. The floor of a cave is uncommonly hard, and a ridge in the floor may wear you out if you try to sleep across it. The pleasant part of a cave for sleeping is the mouth of it. It is just as well, by the way, to make sure that the cave is uninhabited before establishing yourself for the night.
In more civilized parts I have spent very pleasant nights under bridges. I cannot recommend railway bridges, as the trains shake down dirt, but river and road bridges have frequently very sweet natural homes for wanderers, close in where the first timbers meet the ground. One should, however, arrive in time to choose a place which has not been used before you by some domestic animal, since you may find insects in such places.
In certain countries the hammock is an ideal convenience for sleeping, but it needs getting used to, and there are some people who always fall out of them in the night. In the jungles of the tropics or of subtropical countries, it is the accepted mode. You need enough mosquito netting to swathe your body three times and, wrapped in that, you swing in your boat of rope.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DIP
SOME tramps have a groundless fear of water. In Russia they call it vodaboyazn, which means simply “water fright,” and is a better word than hydrophobia, which means the same thing, but is connected in the mind with mad dogs. Here, no mad dog is in question. Water: a liquid recommended for external use, is greatly despised by certain winebibbers who affect to be afraid that it will get into the wine. The fact is, most of them have got the water fright. After a stout bottle of Burgundy and a cigar, what more dreadful torture can be imagined than sitting under a fountain of water. It is better to sit in an old leather chair in a Piccadilly window than on a chair in the rocks under a flowing cascade. “I am for that Piccadilly window,” says the confirmed lizard—and not a few tramps are at one with the clubman. However, once you get the water fright it is almost incurable, and perhaps not worth writing about.
Coldness of the water is a prejudice. The coldest dip in the sea is easier to take than the ordinary cold bath in a cramped bathroom. The immediate activity of the body conquers the cold. In a bathroom most people have to be painfully passive. But truly, in those seasons of the year when one is able to sleep out of doors one need not fear the temperature of the water.