From water to fire is a natural transition. How to get a blaze just when you want it puzzles the will sometimes hugely. Every traveller should provide himself with a good handy steel, proper flint, and unfailing tinder, because lucifers are liable to many accidents. Pliny recommended the wood of mulberry, bay-laurel, and ivy, as good material to be rubbed together in order to procure a fire; but Pliny is behind the times, and must not be trusted to make rules for General McLellan's boys. Of course no one would omit to take lucifers on a tramp; but steel, flint, and tinder are three warm friends that in an emergency will always come up to the strike. To find firewood is a knack, and it ought to be well cultivated. Don't despise bits of dry moss, fine grass, and slips of bark, if you come across them. Twenty fires are failures in the open air for one that succeeds, unless the operator knows his business. A novice will use matches, wood, wind, time, and violent language enough to burn down a city, and never get any satisfaction out of all the expenditure; while a knowing hand will, out of the stump of an old, half-rotten tree, bring you such magnificent, permanent heat, that your heart and your tea-kettle will sing together for joy over it. In making a fire, depend upon it, there is something more than luck,—there is always talent in it. We once saw Charles Lever (Harry Lorrequer's father) build up a towering blaze in a woody nook out of just nothing but what he scraped up from the ground, and his rare ability. You remember Mr. Opie the painter's answer to a student who asked him what he mixed his colors with. "Brains, Sir," was the artist's prompt, gruff, and right reply. It takes brains to make a fire in a rainy night out in the woods; but it can be done,—if you only know how to begin. We have seen a hearth made of logs on a deep snow sending out a cheerful glow, while the rain dripped and froze all about the merry party assembled.
A traveller ought to be a good swimmer. There are plenty of watery crossings to be got over, and often there are no means at hand but what Nature has provided in legs and arms. But one of the easiest things in the world to make is a raft. Inflatable India-rubber boats also are now used in every climate, and a full-sized one weighs only forty pounds. General Fremont and Dr. Livingstone have tested their excellent qualities, and commend them as capable of standing a wonderful amount of wear and tear. But a boat can be made out of almost anything, if one have the skill to put it together. A party of sailors whose boat had been stolen put out to sea and were eighteen hours afloat in a crazy craft made out of a large basket woven with boughs such as they could pick up, and covered with their canvas tent, the inside being plastered with clay to keep out as much of the water as possible.
In fording streams, it is well, if the water be deep and swift, to carry heavy stones in the hands, in order to resist being borne away by the current. Fords should not be deeper than three feet for men, or four feet for horses.
Among the small conveniences, a good strong pocket-knife, a small "hard chisel," and a file should not be forgotten. A great deal of real work can be done with very few tools. One of Colt's rifles is a companion which should be specially cared for, and a water-proof cover should always be taken to protect the lock during showers. There is one rule among hunters which ought always to be remembered, namely,—"Look at the gun, but never let the gun look at you, or at your companions." Travellers are always more or less exposed to the careless handling of fire-arms, and numerous accidents occur by carrying the piece with the cock down on the nipple. Three-fourths of all the gun accidents are owing to this cause; for a blow on the back of the cock is almost sure to explode the cap, while a gun at half-cock is comparatively safe.
Don't carry too many eatables on your expeditions. Dr. Kane says his party learned to modify and reduce their travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and to their apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity were their actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as their Arctic service continued, they went on reducing their sledging-outfit, until they at last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity,—raw meat and a fur bag. Salt and pepper are needful condiments. Nearly all the rest are out of place on a roughing expedition. Among the most portable kinds of solid food are pemmican, jerked meat, wheat flour, barley, peas, cheese, and biscuit. Salt meat is a disappointing dish, and apt to be sadly uncertain. Somebody once said that water had tasted of sinners ever since the flood, and salted meat sometimes has a taint full as vivid. Twenty-eight ounces of real nutriment per diem for a man in rough work as a traveller will be all that he requires; if he perform severe tramping, thirty ounces.
The French say, C'est la soupe qui fait le soldat, and we have always found on a tramping expedition nothing so life-restoring after fatigue and hunger as the portable soup now so easily obtained at places where prepared food is put up for travellers' uses. Spirituous liquors are no help in roughing it. On the contrary, they invite sunstroke, and various other unpleasant visitors incident to the life of a traveller. Habitual brandy-drinkers give out sooner than cold-water men, and we have seen fainting red noses by the score succumb to the weather, when boys addicted to water would crow like chanticleer through a long storm of sleet and snow on the freezing Alps.
It is not well to lose your way; but in case this unpleasant luck befall you, set systematically to work to find it. Throw terror to the idiots who always flutter and flounder, and so go wrong inevitably. Galton the Plucky says,—and he has as much cool wisdom to impart as a traveller needs,—when you make the unlively discovery that you are lost, ask yourself the three following questions:—
1. What is the least distance that I can with certainty specify, within which the path, the river, the sea-shore, etc., that I wish to regain, lies?
2. What is the direction, in a vague, general way, in which the path or river runs, or the sea-coast tends?
3. When I last left the path, etc., did I turn to the left or to the right?