Shifts and expedients of camp life, travel & exploration

by William Barry Lord; Thomas Baines

Where only salt or saline water is to be obtained recourse may be had to distillation, which may serve, as it has done in many well-authenticated cases, to at least save the lives of the human beings and dogs of a party. Little hope could, however, be entertained of being enabled by this means to supply the wants of cattle or horses.

Makeshift still.

A “still” may be very easily made from any vessel which will stand fire, such as one of the copper water barrels hereafter described, or even a common cooking pot and a gun barrel (single or double), a hollow bamboo with the knots removed, or, in fact, any hollow tube. If a pot is used, a stout heavy wooden cover must be fitted to it, through which two holes are to be cut—one at the side for the barrel or tube, and the other a bung-hole at the top, which must have a stopper fitted securely to it, and is used to introduce the water as it becomes exhausted. This saves the trouble of removing the cover, and thus disturbing the other arrangements. The annexed illustration will serve to explain the nature of a contrivance of this kind. The boat-shaped box resting on the forked sticks is made of bark, pinned at the ends with wooden pins. This is filled with a couple of woollen blankets or a quantity of moss, or even seaweed. The barrel passes directly through the centre, and is kept cold by constantly throwing cold water over it. The fresh water runs out through the hole from which the nipple is unscrewed, and is caught in any suitable vessel; and the waste salt water through holes bored in the bark for the purpose. Many modifications of this plan might, of course, be had recourse to, but this will be found about as convenient as any. Barrels, or hooped vessels of any kind, are about the very worst that can be taken into a wild country, as the hoops come off as the wood shrinks, causing leaks and endless trouble.

Copper water flasks.

For carrying water on the backs of animals a pair of thin sheet copper flasks (20in. long, 12in. broad, and 8in. thick) will be found exceedingly convenient. These should have broad and strong loops soldered on to pass leather straps and lashings through, and in using water it should be taken alternately to preserve an even balance. The bung-holes should be at the ends and have a stout raised ring round them, through which a hole is drilled; through this a pin is run, passing through a corresponding hole in the wooden stopper, thus keeping it secure. These flasks, when made, should be thoroughly tinned inside. They are useful for a number of purposes. Water can be boiled in them as well as carried. They can, on an emergency, be converted into a “still,” as before stated, and when corked up air-tight are a great support to a raft. One at each end of an outrigger pole renders the upsetting of a canoe or float log next to impossible. No knocking about hurts them, and should at any time a leak be discovered a bit of solder puts the matter to rights at once.

Water skins and pails.

Next in value to flasks, perhaps, come leather mussacks, of the description used in the East. They can be made of any size, and, when injured or pricked, as they sometimes are by sharp sticks or thirsty niggers, they are readily repaired for the time by pinching up a piece of leather at the orifice and passing a sharp-pointed stick through, over which a clove hitch (see “[Knots and Hitches]”) may be secured. A patch may be sewn on when there is time to do it, just as a cobbler mends a shoe. But bear in mind that, instead of the ordinary thread or hempen cord used in mending or making leather utensils or articles in this country, a dry carefully-cut leather thong should be used instead, as when once in place it swells from the action of the water on it, and completely fills the holes through which it has been passed, thereby preventing leakage.

In Mongolia they use a very useful pail or bucket for carrying water. It has a head fixed into it much like that of an ordinary barrel, and there are two openings or bung-holes; one tolerably large on one side, just below the edge of the head, and another through the head itself. In these orifices wooden plugs or stoppers are fitted, and, when water is to be poured out, the stopper in the head is just eased like the vent peg of a cask, so that air may be admitted; when the stopper is taken out the larger hole freely discharges the water, which would not run without the vent-peg arrangement.