Shifts and expedients of camp life, travel & exploration

by William Barry Lord; Thomas Baines

If it is necessary to make a cask, the pieces forming the discs used for the heads should be dowelled together, with a bit of pith of reed, or other caulking material between them, and the circumference must be thinned off to an obtuse edge. The staves, to look neat, ought to be nicely rounded as segments of a circle, and the ends should be narrower than the centre if belly is to be given to the cask; but if it is not essential that the cask should be perfectly round, the staves may be of flat plank. It is, however, indispensable that their edges should be cut to the proper angle, or they will not fit closely nor support each other when hooped up; the diagram we give will facilitate this. If there are to be 20 staves in a cask their edges must be cut at an angle of 18°, thus 360 divided by 20 is 18, and the angle of any other number may be found by dividing 360 by the number of staves. The chine groove may be cut with a saw, and it is better that the staves should be always a little narrower at the ends than in the middle, so that the hoops may tighten in being driven on.

Water casks, to embark.

To becket a cask, slacken off one or more of the hoops, take a strip of raw hide, slip one end under, twist the middle a little, then turn it, slip the other end under, nick them that they may not draw out, and tighten up the hoop. A kind-hearted American, captain of the “Mechanic,” of Boston, who filled our water casks when we were on scant allowance, off the coast of Australia, taught us this expedient. In towing a number of casks from shore to the vessel becket them in this manner at both ends, and on two sides; then put them end to end, and pass a rope on each side through all the beckets. If there are two boats let one tow ahead of the other, so as to leave but one wake; let the bung-hole be downward, for if the cask leak, the salt water being heaviest, will not run up into the fresh, nor will the fresh run down into the salt; whereas, if the bung is up, the fresh water may splash out and the water of the sea run in and spoil the remaining contents.

Bent wood.

Hoops may be made by taking thin strips of any flexible wood, three or four times as long as the circumference of the required hoop, coiling them as it were, and then binding or clenching them together. These are very strong and flexible (Fig. 3). Jib stay hanks (Figs. 1 and 2) are made of any tough wood, in bars 14in. or 16in. long, 1in. wide, and a little more than ½in. thick at one edge, and somewhat less at the other. These are notched about 2in. from the ends, so that when they are bent the ends may cross each other and afford a hold for the lashing that attaches them to the leach of the sail. They are not fastened as the sailor opens them to put them on the stay, and the lashing to the leach rope fastens them sufficiently. Hanks may be made of the fork of a branch (Figs. 4, 6 and 7), and if a double hank is required, a branch with two forks (Fig. 5) will serve the purpose.

In South America stirrups are very neatly made by taking a bar of tough wood (Fig. 1), 1ft. or 14in. long, notching it so as to leave in the centre a piece of the full thickness 4in. long, and leaving the ends of the full thickness, thinning down from them to the notch on each side till the wood can be safely turned up so that the ends meet and form the bow of the stirrup (Fig. 2). The ends are cut to the proper bevel, and fastened by a thong in a hole bored through them. A couple of horizontal bars, 2in. long, fastened above, form a slip for the stirrup leather to pass through. This is a very neat arrangement, but its only fault is its extreme lightness, as, when the horse is in rapid motion, the foot cannot readily find the stirrup if it should be lost for a moment. In this respect, the block of wood, sometimes richly carved and ornamented, used by the Chilians (Fig. 3), is, notwithstanding its clumsy appearance, far superior. Three bars, so lashed as to form an equilateral triangle of at least 5in. inner measurement, will make a good stirrup. The fork of a branch, with a cross piece lashed on it, or suspended so that one of its arms forms the tread or bottom piece, a thong of hide making the other side of the triangle, will answer if sufficiently heavy. The hide of the hippopotamus, rhinoceros, or giraffe, when sufficiently dried, may be cut into stirrups, and left to harden. Sometimes the block which forms the stirrup is cut with a projecting spike to form a spur; but the Mexican wooden spurs, consisting of two sticks a little thicker than a pencil, 4in. long, armed with small iron points, and provided with straps as in Fig. 4, are about the neatest and most easily extemporised form we know.

Makeshift axes or adzes.

Among the native tribes of South Africa, where iron, owing to the small scale on which they smelt it, is very scarce and valuable, considerable ingenuity is shown in the mounting of an axe blade. This is generally a triangular piece of iron, with one of its sides thinned down and ground to a rounded edge, and the other two tapered to a spike. It is well known that weight is an essential quality in all chopping instruments, and the deficiency of iron has therefore to be made up with wood. A stout branch, with another projecting from it at an angle of from 70° to 80°, is so cut as to leave a block of the larger limb attached like a mallet head to the smaller one, as in the uppermost figure of our illustration (p. 382). The spike of the axe head is made red hot, a hole is bored through the knob in the direction of the grain, and the axe is ready for use, and has besides the advantage of being convertible into an adze by simply taking out the iron and inserting it again athwart the hole instead of keeping it parallel with the handle; the two lower figures will give a sufficiently good idea of this. We have seen these tools very efficiently wielded by honey hunters and by native woodsmen and carpenters, who, when tired of work, convert the axe handle into a pipe by taking out the iron, partially stopping the middle of the hole with a few green leaves, putting the tobacco into one end, and applying their broad lips to the other.