CHAPTER THREE
THE KNAPSACK
IT is wonderful how much you can carry when it is for pleasure. Soldiers grumble like camels at the loads put on their shoulders. Under some one’s orders they shall march with packs on their backs to such a point to-day, to such another point
With your best foot first and the road a-sliding past,
An’ every bloomin’ camping ground exactly like the last.
The camel groans, the soldier grouses, but the gay tramp puts ever something more into his capacious rucksack for pleasure or profit. There’s a hunk of tobacco, there’s his favorite volume of poems, his sketchbook—his danger is in putting in too much and not putting in the right things.
I assume he is to be equipped for sleeping à la belle étoile. I may mention one or two things he might overlook. First, the pack itself should be well made. I have found in the past that Germans and Austrians make the best rucksacks, and even the best in London seemed to be imported from these countries. The one I have now was purchased some years ago in Vienna, but I think it was the best to be found there. There were many shoddy ones about. The shopkeeper pretended that the one I chose was not for sale, and I spent twelve hours getting it. Not that it is remarkable, but it is a genuinely well made article. Exterior pockets which will not burst are a necessary; interior pockets are also useful.
The worst of the interior of a rucksack is that after a while everything in it gets mixed. Spare boots and linen get sprinkled with coffee; different foods mingle. Some paper wrapper bursts and the sugar spills over everything. Then writing papers, books, or notebooks get greasy. But this is avoided if one provides oneself with half-a-dozen cotton bags which tie with tapes. If these are not obtainable at home they are to be found in some sort of form at a Woolworth’s or a cheap draper’s. It is a small detail, but a matter of comfort: if you feel so disposed you wash out these little cotton bags when they get dirty.
Another valuable extra to put in the rucksack is a few yards of mosquito netting which can be bought quite cheaply, sometimes called brides’ veil in the shops, sometimes leno, sometimes butter-muslin. With this you can defy the mosquito at nights, and by day you can enjoy the luxury of a sun-bath siesta watching the flies which cannot bite your nose. Apropos of the mosquito netting the choice of hat is important. Do not take a cap. You need a brim. And do not take a straw hat. You cannot lie down comfortably with a straw hat on. A tweed hat is best. The brim has a double use. It shields your eyes from the sun, but also, when you lie down where flies and mosquitoes abound, you had best sleep in your hat and use the brim to lift the mosquito net an inch from your face. N.B.—A tramping hat does not get old enough to throw away. The old ones are the best. Of course, once you have slept a night wearing your hat it is not much more use for town wear. It has become more tramp than you are.
I am in favor of carrying a blanket. It is less cumbersome than a sleeping sack and more hygienic. If, however, insects are very troublesome, as in the tropics, and there are “land crabs” and scorpions and tarantulas and what not about, a light sleeping sack may be improvised by sewing together three sides of a pair of small sheets. This I have done: it gets rather airless and smelly. It is best to turn it inside out in the morning and give it plenty of sun. But a blanket will do: take a couple if you are chilly. This makes weight on the back, but it is also a softening comfort and fits the rucksack upon the shoulders on a long hike.