IN CAMP.
It is always advisable to select your camping-ground and be in camp before sunset. Pull the canoe up out of water, take your duffle out, and turn the boat upside down over it. Then make your fire; see that there is no danger of its spreading, and that the breeze is blowing the sparks away from your camp or your canoe. The fire well started, take a pail and a glass jar and go to the nearest farm-house for milk and eggs. When you get back, you will find that the fire has made a nice bed of coals on which you can do your cooking. Never attempt to cook over a blaze. It sometimes happens, however, that the ground is wet, or that a storm will interfere with your fire. For such emergencies it is well to have an alcohol lamp in your outfit, for on this you can boil enough water to cook eggs and make a cup of coffee, and if you are an expert with a chafing dish you can rival the best of city restaurants. But it is not probable that you will have such a luxury as a chafing dish among your equipments. You will probably have a saucepan instead—in fact it is necessary that you should have a saucepan. And with a little practice you can cook almost anything in the latter that you can in a chafing dish. The other necessary cooking utensil is a coffee-pot. With that and the saucepan and a small kettle you can live very comfortably. There are a number of small books of convenient pocket size that will tell you all you want to know about camp cooking. This is a good subject to study up before starting on a cruise.
The supplies that a canoeist takes with him in his boat should consist of a few pounds of sugar, a box of salt, three or four pounds of ground coffee in a tin box with a close-fitting screw top, some bacon, a pound of tea, a couple of jars of marmalade or jam, a tin of deviled ham, and a pound or two of pilot-bread or hardtack. There will be lots of places along the course of your cruise where you will be able to replenish these stores should they run short, and at the villages you pass you can secure fresh meat if you care for it or are skilful enough cook to prepare it. Always have a line and some fish-hooks with you, for a canoeist should be a good fisherman.
A mess-chest is a good thing to have if you are travelling in a "Peterborough." This is a tin box three feet long, one foot high, and about eighteen inches wide. Its top should have a cover of painted canvas, with flaps that will come down over the edges. In this box your provisions and a change of under-clothes may be kept perfectly dry. Carry plenty of matches and a good lantern.
Your matches should be kept in a glass jar with a screw top—an old preserve jar is just the thing. Then they cannot get damp.
CRUISING CANOE UNDER PADDLE.
As to the cruise itself, it should be carefully planned beforehand. Never start off with only a general idea of where you want to go. It is a bad thing to trust to luck in canoeing. Plan your trip so that you will start at the head of some river, or as near the head as you can find good water, and cruise down. Don't attempt to cover too great a distance in one day. Twenty-five miles a day is enough, and is more than you will care to make if most of it has to be paddled. Further—never hurry. Take plenty of time to fish, bathe, land, visit the country, and eat your meals regularly. If you have only a certain number of days to devote to your cruise, lay out the distance you must cover each day, and try to stick to your schedule as closely as camping-grounds will allow. Keep a record of your adventures in a log-book; this will prove not only interesting but valuable in the future.
No one should ever think of taking a canoe cruise unless he can swim. The canoeist gets too many upsets to risk venturing into deep water unless he can take care of himself. It is a good thing to practise upsetting in shallow water, so as to learn how to climb back into your boat again. Having fallen into the stream or the lake, whichever it may be, swim back to your canoe and seize the side nearest to you at the middle with your left hand. Then reach across the cockpit to the opposite gunwale with your right, and extend your body horizontally on the surface of the water. By a quick motion you can easily draw yourself across the cockpit and into the canoe again. It is well to keep your paddle tied to a thwart with a stout string long enough not to interfere with your work. Then it cannot float away when you upset.
