The Classic Guidebook For Survival In The Wilderness
It is an age of hurry and worry. Anything slower than steam is apt to "get left." Fortunes are quickly made and freely spent. Nearly all busy, hard-worked Americans have an intuitive sense of the need that exists for at least one period of rest and relaxation during each year, and all—or nearly all—are willing to pay liberally, too liberally in fact, for anything that conduces to rest, recreation and sport. I am sorry to say that we mostly get swindled. As an average, the summer outer who goes to forest, lake or stream for health and sport, gets about ten cents' worth for a dollar of outlay. A majority will admit—to themselves at least—that after a month's vacation, they return to work with an inward consciousness of being somewhat disappointed—and beaten. We are free with our money when we have it. We are known throughout the civilized world for our lavishness in paying for our pleasures; but it humiliates us to know we have been beaten, and this is what the most of us know at the end of a summer vacation. To the man of millions it makes little difference. He is able to pay liberally for boats, buckboards and "body service," if he chooses to spend a summer in the North Woods. He has no need to study the questions of lightness and economy in a forest and stream outing. Let his guides take care of him; and unto them and the landlords he will give freely of his substance.
I do not write for him, and can do him little good. But there are hundreds of thousands of practical, useful men, many of them far from being rich; mechanics, artists, writers, merchants, clerks, business men—workers, so to speak—who sorely need and well deserve a season of rest and relaxation at least once a year. To these, and for these, I write.
Perhaps more than fifty years of devotion to "woodcraft" may enable me to give a few useful hints and suggestions to those whose dreams, during the close season of work, are of camp-life by flood, field and forest.
I have found that nearly all who have a real love of nature and out-of-door camp-life, spend a good deal of time and talk in planning future trips, or discussing the trips and pleasures gone by, but still dear to memory.
Contents
CHAPTER I Overwork and Recreation—Outing and Outers—How to Do It, and Why They Miss It
CHAPTER II Knapsack, Hatchet, Knives, Tinware, Rods, Fishing Tackle, Ditty-Bag
CHAPTER III Getting Lost—Camping Out—Roughing It or Smoothing It—Insects—Camps, and How to Make Them
CHAPTER IV Camp-Fires and Their Importance—The Wasteful, Wrong Way They Are Usually Made, and the Right Way to Make Them
CHAPTER V Fishing, With and Without Flies—Some Tackle and Lures—Discursive Remarks on the Gentle Art—The Headlight—Frogging
CHAPTER VI Camp Cooking—How It Is Usually Done, with a Few Simple Hints on Plain Cooking—Cooking Fire and Out-Door Range
CHAPTER VII More Hints on Cooking, with Some Simple Receipts—Bread, Coffee, Potatoes, Soup, Stews, Beans, Fish, Meat, Venison
CHAPTER VIII A Ten Days' Trip in the Wilderness—Going It Alone
CHAPTER IX—CANOEING The Light Canoe and Double Blade—Various Canoes for Various Canoeists—Reasons for Preferring the Clinker-Built Cedar
CHAPTER X Odds and Ends—Where to go for an Outing—Why a Clinker?—Boughs and Browse
