The art of travel

BIVOUAC.

There are four ways in which travellers who are thrown upon their own resources may house themselves. They may bivouac, that is to say, they may erect a temporary shelter of a makeshift character, partly from materials found on the spot, and partly from the cloths they may happen to possess; they may build a substantial hut, which of course takes a good deal of labour to complete; they may use sleeping-bags; or they may pitch a regular tent. I will speak of these four methods of encamping, --the bivouac, the hut, the sleeping-bag, and the tent, in that order.

General Remarks.--Bivouacking is miserable work in a wet or unhealthy climate; but in a dry and healthy one, there is no question of its superiority over tenting. Men who sleep habitually in the open, breathe fresher air and are far more imbued with the spirit of wild life, than those who pass the night within the stuffy enclosure of a tent. It is an endless pleasure to lie half awake watching the stars above, and the picturesque groupings of the encampment round about, and to hear on all sides the stirrings of animal life. And later in the night, when the fire is low, and servants and cattle are asleep, and there is no sound but of the wind and an occasional plaintive cry of wild animals, the traveller finds himself in that close communion with nature which is the true charm of wild travel. Now all this pleasure is lost by sleeping in a tent. Tent life is semi-civilization, and perpetuates its habits. This may be illustrated by a simple trait; a man who has lived much in bivouacs, if there be a night alarm, runs naturally into the dark for safety, just as a wild animal would; but a man who travels with tents becomes frightened when away from its lights, or from the fancied security of its walls.

In a dangerous country there can be no comparison between the hazard of a tent and that of a bivouac. In the former a man's sleep is heavy; he cannot hear nearly so well; he can see nothing; his cattle may all decamp; while marauders know exactly where he is lying, and may make their plans accordingly. They may creep up unobserved and spear him through the canvas. The first Napoleon had a great opinion of the advantages of bivouacking over those of tenting. He said it was the healthier of the two for soldiers. (See p. 153.)

Shelter from the Wind.--Study the form of a hare! In the flattest and most unpromising of fields, the creature will have availed herself of some little hollow to the lee of an insignificant tuft of grass, and there she will have nestled and fidgeted about till she has made a smooth, round, grassy bed, compact and fitted to her shape, where she may curl herself snugly up, and cower down below the level of the cutting night wind. Follow her example. A man, as he lies upon his mother earth, is an object so small and low that a screen of eighteen inches high will guard him securely from the strength of a storm. A common mistake of a novice lies in selecting a tree for his camping-place, which spreads out nobly above, but affords no other shelter from the wind than that of its bare stem below.

It may be, that as he walks about in search of shelter, a mass of foliage at the level of his eye, with its broad shadow, attracts him, and as he stands to the leeward of it it seems snug, and, therefore, without further reflection, he orders his bed to be spread at the foot of some tree. But as soon as he lies down on the ground the tree proves worthless as a screen against the wind; it is a roof, but it is not a wall. The real want in blowy weather is a dense low screen, perfectly wind-tight, as high as the knee above the ground. Thus, if a traveller has to encamp on a bare turf plain, he need only turn up a sod seven feet long by two feet wide, and if he succeeds in propping it on its edge, it will form a sufficient shield against the wind.

In heavy gales, the neighbourhood of a solitary tree is a positive nuisance. It creates a violent eddy of wind, that leaves palpable evidence of its existence. Thus, in corn-fields, it is a common result of a storm to batter the corn quite flat in circles round each tree that stands in the field, while elsewhere no injury takes place. This very morning that I am writing these remarks, November 158, I was forcibly struck by the appearance of Kensington Gardens, after last night's gale, which had covered the ground with an extraordinary amount of dead leaves. They lay in a remarkably uniform layer, of from three to five inches in depth, except that round each and every tree the ground was absolutely bare of leaves for a radius of about a yard. The effect was as though circular discs had been cut out, leaving the edges of the layer of leaves perfectly sharp and vertical. It would have been a dangerous mistake to have slept that night at the foot of any one of those trees.

Again, in selecting a place for bivouac, we must bear in mind that a gale never blows in level currents, but in all kinds of curls and eddies, as the driving of a dust-storm, or the vagaries of bits of straw caught up by the wind, unmistakably show us. Little hillocks or undulations, combined with the general lay of the ground, are a chief cause of these eddies; they entirely divert the current of the wind from particular spots. Such spots should be looked for; they are discovered by watching the grass or the sand that lies on the ground. If the surface be quiet in one place, while all around it is agitated by the wind, we shall not be far wrong in selecting that place for our bed, however unprotected it may seem in other respects. It is constantly remarked, that a very slight mound or ridge will shelter the ground for many feet behind it; and an old campaigner will accept such shelter gladly, notwithstanding the apparent insignificances of its cause.

Shelter from the Sky.--The shelter of a wall is only sufficient against wind or driving rain; we require a roof to shield us against vertical rain, and against dew, or what is much the same thing, against the cold of a clear blue sky on a still night. The temperature of the heavens is known pretty accurately, by more than one method of calculation: it is -239 degrees Fahr.; the greatest cold felt in the Arctic regions being about -40 degrees Fahr. If the night be cloudy, each cloud is a roof to keep off the cold; if it be clear, we are exposed to the full chill of the blue sky, with only such alleviation as the warming and the non-conducting powers of the atmosphere may afford. The effect is greater than most people would credit. The uppermost layer of the earth, or whatever may be lying exposed upon it, is called upon to part with a great quantity of heat. If it so happen that the uppermost layer is of a non-conducting nature, the heat abstracted from it will be poorly resupplied by communication from the lower ones. Again, if the night be a very calm one, there will be no supply of warmth from fresh currents of air falling down upon it. Hence, in the treble event of a clear blue sky, a non-conducting soil, and a perfectly still night, we are liable to have great cold on the surface of the ground. This is shared by a thin layer of air that immediately rests upon it; while at each successive inch in height, the air becomes more nearly of its proper temperature. A vast number of experiments have been made by Mr. Glaisher on this subject ('Phil. Trans.' 1847), the upshot of which is that a thermometer laid on grass, under a blue sky on a calm night, marks on an average 8 degrees Fahr. colder than one 4 feet above it; 1 inch above grass, 5 1/2 degrees; 1 foot, 1 degrees; 4 feet, 1/2 degrees; on gravel and sand the differences are only about one-third as much. Sheep have a practical knowledge of these differences. Often, in an early walk on dewy mornings, I see all the sheep in Hyde Park bivouacked on the gravel walks of Rotten Row. The above figures are the results of experiments made in England, where the air is always moist, and the formation of dew, while it testifies to the cold of the night, assists largely to moderate it. In arid climates the chill would be far greater; such would also be the case at high elevations. One of Mr. Glaisher's experiments showed a difference of no less than 28 degrees between the cold on the ground and that at 8 feet high. This might often be rivalled in an elevated desert, as in that of Mongolia. Hence the value of the protection of a roof and of a raised sleeping-place, to a man sleeping under a blue sky in still weather, admits of easy interpretation.

Various Methods of Bivouacking.--Unprotected.--Mr. Shaw, the traveller in Thibet, says:--"My companion and I walked on to keep ourselves warm, but halting at sunset, had to sit and freeze several hours before the things came up. The best way of keeping warm on such an occasion, is to squat down, kneeling against a bank, resting your head on the bank, and nearly between your knees. Then tuck your overcoat in, all round you, over head and all; and if you are lucky, and there is not too much wind, you will make a little atmosphere of your own inside the covering, which will be snug in comparison with the outside air. Your feet suffer chiefly, but you learn to tie yourself into a kind of knot, bringing as many surfaces of your body together as possible. I have passed whole nights in this kneeling position, and slept well; whereas I should not have got a wink had I been stretched at full length with such a scanty covering as a great-coat."

Bushes.--I have shown that the main object before sleeping out at night is to secure a long wind-tight wall, and that the next is to obtain a roof. Both these objects may be attained by pleachingtwo or three small neighbouring bushes into one; or branches may be torn off elsewhere and interwoven between the bushes. A few leafy boughs, cut and stuck into the ground, with their tops leaning over the bed, and secured in that position by other boughs, wattled-in horizontally, give great protection. Long grass, etc., should be plucked and strewn against them to make them as wind-tight as possible.

Walls.--A pile of saddle-bags and other travelling gear may be made into a good screen against the wind; and travellers usually arrange them with that intention. Walls of stone may be built as a support to cloths, whose office it is to render the walls wind-tight, and also by lapping over their top, to form a partial roof. We have already spoken of a broad sod of turf propped up on edge.

"The Thibetan traveller cares for no roof overhead if he can shelter himself from the wind behind a three-foot wall. Hence the numerous little enclosures clustered together like cells of a honeycomb at every halting-place, with one side always raised against the prevailing wind. (Shaw.) These walls are built round shallow pits, each with its rough fireplace in the middle.

Cloths.--Any cloth may be made to give shelter by an arrangement like that in the sketch.

The corners of the cloth should be secured by simple hitches in the rope, and never by knots. The former are sufficient for all purposes of security, but the latter will jam, and you may have to injure both cloth and string to get them loose again. It is convenient to pin the sides of the cloth with a skewer round the ropes. Any strip of wood makes a skewer. Earth should be banked against the lowest edge of the cloth, to keep out the wind, and to prevent its flapping. The sticks may, on an emergency, be replaced by faggots of brushwood, by guns, or by ropes carried down from the overhanging branches of a large tree. (For a sail supported by oars, see "Sail Tent" p. 108.)

Fremont, the American traveller bivouacked as follows:--His rifles were tied together near the muzzles, the butts resting on the ground widely apart; a knife was laid on the rope that tied them together, to cut it in case of an alarm; over this extempore framework was thrown a large india-rubber cloth, with which he covered his packs when on the road; it made a cover sufficiently large to receive about half of his bed, and was a place of shelter for his instruments.

Gordon Cumming.--The following extract is from Mr. Gordon Cumming's book on Africa: it describes the preparations of a practised traveller for a short excursion from his wagons away into the bush. "I had at length got into the way of making myself tolerably comfortable in the field, and from this date I seldom went in quest of elephants without the following impedimenta, i.e. a large blanket, which I folded and secured before my saddle as a dragoon does his cloak, and two leather sacks, containing a flannel shirt, warm trousers, and a woollen night-cap, spare ammunition, washing-rod, coffee, bread, sugar, pepper and salt, dried meat, a wooden bowl, and a tea-spoon. These sacks were carried on the shoulders of the natives, for which service I remunerated them with beads. They also carried my coffee-kettle, two calabashes of water, two American axes, and two sickles, which I used every evening to cut grass for my bed, and likewise for my horses to eat throughout the night; and my after-rider carried extra ammunition and a spare rifle."

Importance of Comfort.--To conclude these general hints, let the traveller, when out in trying weather, work hard at making his sleeping-place perfectly dry and comfortable; he should not cease until he is convinced that it will withstand the chill of the early morning, when the heat of the yesterday's sun is exhausted, and that of the coming sun has not begun to be felt. It is wretched beyond expression for a man to lie shivering beneath a scanty covering and to feel the night air become hourly more raw, while his life-blood has less power to withstand it; and to think, self-reproachfully, how different would have been his situation if he had simply had forethought and energy enough to cut and draw twice the quantity of firewood, and to spend an extra half-hour in labouring to make himself a snugger berth. The omission once made becomes irreparable; for in the cold of a pitiless night he has hardly sufficient stamina to rise and face the weather, and the darkness makes him unable to cope with his difficulties.

Bivouac in Special Localities.--Encampment in Forests.--A clump of trees yields wonderful shelter. The Swedes have a proverb that "the forest is the poor man's jacket." In fir-woods there is great facility in making warm encampments; for a young tree, when it is felled, yields both poles to support branches for shields against weather, and finer cuttings for flooring above the snow or damp. A common plan is to support a cross-bar by two uprights, as shown in the figure; against this cross-bar a number of poles are made to lean; on the back of the poles abundance of fir branches are laid horizontally; and lastly, on the back of these are another set of leaning poles, in order to secure them by their weight.

On Bare Plains.--Avoid sleeping in slight hollows during clear still weather. The cold stratum of air, of which I spoke in the section of "Shelter from the Sky," pours down into them, like water from the surrounding plain, and stagnates. Spring frosts are always more severely felt in hollows. Therefore, in a broad level plain, especially if the night be clear and calm, look out for some slightly rising ground for an encampment. The chilled stratum of air drains from off it, and is replaced by warmer air. Horses and cattle, as the night sets in, always draw up to these higher grounds, which rise like islands through the sea of mist that covers the plain.

Walls have been built for shelter against the wind, on a bare sandy plain, by taking empty bags, filling them with sand, and then building them up as if they had been stones.

Buried, or in Holes.--A European can live through a bitter night, on a perfectly dry sandy plain, without any clothes besides what he has on, if he buries his body pretty deeply in the sand, keeping only his head above ground. It is a usual habit of the naked natives in Australia to do so, and not an unfrequent one of the Hottentots of South Africa. Mr. Moffat records with grateful surprise how he passed a night, of which he had gloomy forebodings, in real comfort, even luxury, by adopting this method. A man may be as comfortable in a burrow as in a den. I shall speak of underground houses under "Hutting;" and for the present will only mention that, in arid countries, dry wells, dug by natives and partially choked by drifted sand, are often to be met with. They are generally found near existing watering-places, where they have been superseded by others, better placed and deeper. Now, there are few warmer sleeping-places than one of these dry wells; a small fire is easily kept burning at the bottom, and the top may be partially roofed over.

In Ashes of Camp Fire.--A few chill hours may be got over, in a plain that affords no other shelter, by nestling among the ashes of a recently burnt-out camp fire.

Warm Carcases.--In Napoleon's retreat, after his campaign in Russia, many a soldier saved or prolonged his life by creeping within the warm and reeking carcase of a horse that had died by the way.

By the water-side.--A stony beach makes a fine dry encamping-place, and has this advantage, that it makes it impossible for marauders to creep up unheard. But the immediate neighbourhood of fresh water is objectionable, for, besides being exposed to malaria and mosquitoes, the night air is more cold and penetrating by its side, than at one or two hundred yards' distance from it. (I will speak of walls of rushes and reeds, under "Huts.")

By Rocks.--In the cruel climate of Thibet, Dr. Hooker tells us that it is the habit to encamp close to some large rock, because a rock absorbs heat all day, and parts with it but slowly during the night-time. It is, therefore, a reservoir of warmth when the sun is down, and its neighbourhood is coveted in the night-time. Owing to the same cause, acting in the opposite direction, the shadow of a broad rock is peculiarly cool and grateful, during the heat of the day, in a thirsty land.

On Heather.--Mr. St. John tells us of an excellent way in which Highland poachers, when in a party usually pass frosty nights on the moor-side. They cut quantities of heather, and strew part of it as a bed on the ground; then all the party lie down, side by side, excepting one man whose place among the rest is kept vacant for him. His business is to spread plaids upon them as they lie, and to heap up the remainder of the heather upon the plaids. This being accomplished, the man wriggles and works himself into the gap that has been left for him in the midst of his comrades.

On Snow.--I shall have to describe snow-houses and snow-walls covered with sail-cloth, under "Huts." Here I will speak of more simple arrangements. Dr. Kane says:--"We afterwards learnt to modify and reduce our travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and to our apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our sledging outfit, until we at last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity--raw meat and a fur bag." Lieut. Cresswell, R.N., who, having been detached from Captain McClure's ship in 1853, was the first officer who ever accomplished the famous North-West passage, gave the following graphic account of the routine of his journeying, in a speech at Lynn:--"You must be aware that in Arctic travelling you must depend entirely on your own resources. You have not a single thing else to depend on except snow-water: no produce of the country, nor firewood, or coals, or anything off the sort; and whatever you have to take, to sustain you for the journey, you must carry or drag. It is found by experience more easy to drag it on sledges than to carry it. The plan we adopt is this:--we have a sledge generally manned by about six or ten men, which we load with provisions, with tents, and all requisites for travelling, simple cooking utensils, spirits-of-wine for cooking, etc., and start off. The quantity of people can generally drag over the ice is forty days' provisions; that gives about 200 lbs. weight to each. After starting from the ship, and having travelled a certain number of hours--generally ten or eleven--we encamp for the night, or rather for the day, because it is considered better to travel at night and sleep at day, on account of the glare of the sun on the snow. We used to travel journeys of about ten hours, and then encamp, light our spirits-of-wine, put our kettle on it to thaw our snow-water, and after we had had our supper--just a piece of pemmican and a glass of water--we were glad to smoke our pipes and turn into bed. The first thing we did, after pitching the tent, was to lay a sort of macintosh covering over the snow; on this a piece of buffalo robe was stretched. Each man and officer had a blanket sewn up in the form of a bag; and into these we used to jump, much in the same way as you may see a boy do in a sack. We lay down head and feet, the next person to me having his head to my feet, and his feet to my head, so that we lay like herrings in a barrel. After this, we covered ourselves with skin, spreading them over the whole of us; and the closer we got, the better, as there was more warmth. We lay till the morning, and then the process was the same again." It appears that people may bury themselves in snow, and want neither air nor warmth. I have never made the experiment; but have read of numerous instances of people falling into snow-drifts, and not being extricated for many days, and when at length they were taken out, they never seem to have complained of cold, or any other sufferings than those of hunger and of anxiety.

HUTS.

Huts and Snow-Houses.--In making a depôt, it is usual to build a house; often the men must pass weeks in inactivity, and they had better spend their time in making their quarters comfortable than in idleness. Whatever huts are used by the natives are sure, if made with extra care, to be good enough for European travellers.

Log-huts.--In building log-huts, four poles are planted in the ground, to correspond to the four corners; against these, logs are piled one above another as in the drawing below; they are so deeply notched where their ends are crossed, that the adjacent sides are firmly dovetailed. When the walls are entirely completed, the door and windows are chopped out.

The spaces between the logs must be caulked with moss, etc., or the log-cabin will be little better than a log-cage. It requires a great many logs to make a hut; for, supposing the walls to be 8 feet high, and the trees to average 8 inches in diameter, twelve trees would be required to build up one side, or forty-eight for all four walls. Other timber would also be wanted for the roof.

Underground Huts are used in all quarters of the globe. The experience of our troops when encamped before Sebastopol during an inclement season told strongly in their favour. Their timely adoption was the salvation of the British army. They are essentially, nothing else than holes in the ground, roofed over, fig. 1.

The shape and size of the hole corresponds to that of the roof it may be possible to procure for it; its depth is no greater than requisite for sitting or standing. If the roof has a pitch of 2 feet in the middle, the depth of the hole need not exceed 4 1/2 feet. In the Crimea, the holes were rectangular, and were roofed like huts.

Where there is a steep hillside, a a', fig. 2, an underground hut, b, is easily contrived; because branches laid over its top, along the surface of the ground, have sufficient pitch to throw off the rain. Of course the earth must be removed from a', at the place intended for the doorway.

Reed Huts.--The reed huts of the Affej Arabs, and other inhabitants of the Chaldean marshes, are shaped like wagon-roofs, and are constructed of semicircular ribs of reeds, planted in the ground, one behind the other, at equal distances apart; each rib being a faggot of reeds of 2 feet in diameter. For strength, they are bound round every yard with twisted bands of reeds. When this framework has been erected, it is covered with two or three sheets of fine reed matting (see "Matting"), which forms a dwelling impervious to rain. Some of the chiefs' huts are as much as 40 feet long, and 12 high; the other huts are considerably smaller. Many of these reed dwellings are contained in compounds enclosed by lofty reed fences; the reeds being planted upright, and simply strung together by a thread run through them, as they stand side by side. (See "Straw and Reed Walls.")

Snow-houses.--Few travellers have habitually made snow-houses, except Sir J. Franklin's party and that of Dr. Rae. Great praises are bestowed on their comfort by all travellers, but skill and practice are required in building them. The mode of erection of these dome-shaped buildings is as follows:--It is to be understood that compact, underlying snow is necessary for the floor of the hut; and that the looser textured, upper layer of snow, is used to build the house. First, select and mark out the circular plot on which the hut is to be raised. Then, cut out of that plot, with knives, deep slices of snow, 6 inches wide, 3 feet long, and of a depth equal to that of the layer of loose snow, say one or two feet. These slices are to be of a curved shape, so as to form a circular ring when placed on their edges, and of a suitable radius for the first row of snow-bricks. Other slices are cut on the same principle for the succeeding rows; but when the domed roof has to be made, the snow-bricks must be cut with the necessary double curvature. A conical plug fills up the centre of the dome. Loose snow is next heaped over the house, to fill up crevices. Lastly a doorway is cut out with knives; also a window, which is glazed with a sheet of the purest ice at hand. For inside accommodation there should be a pillar or two of snow to support the lamps.

Snow Walls with Tenting for their Roofs.--Sir L. McClintock says:--"We travelled each day until dusk, and then were occupied for a couple of hours in building our snow-hut. The four walls were run up until 5 1/2 feet high, inclining inwards as much as possible, over these our tent was laid to form a roof. We could not afford the time necessary to construct a dome of snow. Our equipment consisted of a very small brown-holland tent, macintosh floor-cloth and felt robes; besides this, each man had a bag of double blanketing, and a pair of fur boots, to sleep in. We wore mocassins over the pieces of blanketing in which our feet were wrapped up, and, with the exception of a change of this foot-gear, carried no spare clothes.

"When we halted for the night, Thompson and I usually sawed out the blocks of compact snow, and carried them to Petersen, who acted as the master-mason in building the hut. The hour-and-a-half or two hours usually employed in erecting the edifice was the most disagreeable part of the day's labour; for, in addition to being already well tired and desiring repose, we became thoroughly chilled while standing about. The dogs were then fed, then the sledge unpacked, and everything carried into it. The door was now blocked up with snow, the cooking-lamp lighted, foot-gear changed, diary writing up, watches wound, sleeping-bags wriggled into, pipes lighted, and the merits of the various dogs discussed, until supper was ready; the supper swallowed, the upper robe or coverlet pulled over, and then to sleep. Next morning came breakfast, a struggle to get into frozen mocassins, after which the sledges were packed, and another day's march commenced. In these little huts we usually slept warm enough, although latterly, when our blankets and clothes became loaded with ice, we felt the cold severely. When our low doorway was carefully blocked up with snow, and the cooking-lamp alight, the temperature quickly rose, so that the walls became glazed and our bedding thawed; but the cooking over, or the doorway partially opened, it as quickly fell again, so that it was impossible to sleep, or even to hold one's pannikin of tea without putting mits on, so intense was the cold."--Sir L. McClintock is here speaking of a temperature of -39 degrees Fahr.

Materials for building Huts.--The materials whence the walls and roofs of huts may be constructed are very numerous: there is hardly any place which does not furnish one or other of them. Those principally in use are as follows:--

Wattle-and-daub, to be executed neatly, required well-shaped and flexible sticks; but a hut may be constructed much like the sketch (see p. 120) of the way of "Drying Clothes." It is made by planting in the ground a number of bare sticks, 4 feet long, and 1 foot apart, bending their tops together, lashing them fast with string or strips of bark, and wattling them judiciously here and there, by means of other boughs, laid horizontally. Then, by heaping leaves--and especially broad pieces of bark, if you can get them--over all, and banking up the earth on either side, pretty high, an excellent kennel is made. If daubed over with mud, clay, or cattle-dung, the hut becomes more secure against the weather. To proceed a step further:--as many poles may be planted in the ground as sticks have been employed in making the roof; and then the roof may be lifted bodily in the air, and lashed to the top of the poles, each stick to its corresponding pole. This sort of structure is very common among savages.

For methods of digging holes in which to plant the hut-poles, see the chapter on "Wells." The holes made in the way I have there explained are far better than those dug with spades; for they disturb no more of the hardened ground than is necessary for the insertion of the palisades. To jam a pole tightly in its place, wedges of wood should be driven in at its side, and earth rammed down between the wedges.

Palisades are excellent as walls or as enclosures. They are erected of vast lengths, by savages wholly destitute of tools, both for the purposes of fortification and also for completing lines of pitfalls across wide valleys. the pitfalls occupy gaps left in the palisading. The savages burn down the trees in the following manner:--a party of men go to the forest, and light small fires round the roots of the trees they propose to fell. the fires are prevented from flaming upwards by the judicious application of leaves, etc. When the fire has eaten a little way into the tree, the man who watches it scrapes the fire aside and knocks away the charred wood, exposing a fresh surface for fire to act upon, and then replaces the burning embers. A single man may easily attend to a dozen trees, and, indeed, to many more, if the night be calm. Some hours elapse before the trees actually fall. Their tops and branches are burnt off as they lie on the ground. The poles being thus procured for the palisading, they are carried to the required place, where holes are dug for their reception, on the principle described in "Wells," to which I have just alluded.

Straw or Reed Walls of the following kind are very effective, and they have the advantage of requiring a minimum of string (or substitute for string) in their manufacture. The straw, reeds, or herbage, of almost any description, is simply nipped between two pairs of long sticks, which are respectively tied together at their ends, and at a sufficient number of intermediate places. The whole is neatly squared and trimmed.

A few of these would give good help in finishing the roof or walls of a house. They can be made moveable, so as to suit the wind, shade, and aspect. Even the hut door can be made on this principle. In reedy countries where there are no sticks, thin faggots of reeds are used in their place.

Bark.--Bark is universally used in Australia for roofs of huts and temporary buildings; the colonists learnt the use of it from the natives, and some trees, at least, in every forest-country might very probably be found as well fitted for that purpose as those in Australia. The bark may be easily removed, only when the sap is well up in the tree, but a skilful person will manage to procure bark at all seasons of the year, except in the coldest winter months; and even then he will light on some tree, from the sunny side of which he can strip broad pieces. The process of bark-stripping is simply to cut two rings right round the tree (usually from 6 to 9 feet apart), and one vertical slit to join them; starting from the slit, and chipping away step by step on either side, the whole cylinder of bark is removed. The larger the tree, the better; for if the tree is less than 18 inches, or so, in diameter, the bark is apt to break when flattened out. When stripped for huts, it is laid on the ground for some days to dry, being flattened out on its face, and a few stones or logs put on it. the ordinary bark of gum-trees is about half an inch to three-eighths thick, so that a large sheet is very heavy. Most exploring expeditions are accompanied by a black, whose dexterity in stripping bark for a wet night is invaluable, as if the bark will "come off" well, he can procure enough of it in an hour's time to make a shelter for a large party.

Mats can be woven with ease when there is abundance of string, or some equivalent for it (see "String"), in the following manner:--

A, B, are two pegs driven into the ground and standing about a foot out of it. A stake, A B, is lashed across them; a row of pegs, E, are driven into the ground, parallel to A, B, and about 6 inches apart. Two sets of strings are then tied to A B; one set are fastened by their loose ends into clefts, in the pegs E, and the other set are fastened to the stick, C D. If there be ten strings in all, then 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, are tied to C D, and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, to A B. By alternately raising and depressing C D, and by pushing in a handful of rushes between the two sets of strings after each of its movements, and, finally, by patting them home with a flat stick, this rough sort of weaving is carried on very successfully. Mats are also plaited in breadths, and the breadths are stitched together, side by side. Or a thicker kind of mat may be made by taking a wisp of straw and working it in the same way in which straw beehives are constructed. Straw is worked more easily after being damped and beaten with a mallet.

Malay hitch.--I know no better name for the wonderfully simple way (shown in the figure) of attaching together wisps of straw, rods, laths, reeds, planks, poles, or anything of the kind, into a secure and flexible mat; the sails used in the far East are made in this way, and the moveable decks of vessels are made of bamboos, joined together with a similar but rather more complicated stitch.

I may remark that soldiers might be trained to a great deal of hutting practice in a very inexpensive way, if they were drilled at putting together huts, whose roofs and walls were made of planks lashed together by this simple hitch, and whose supports were short scaffolding poles planted in deep holes, dug, as explained in the chapter on "Wells," with the hand and a small stick. The poles, planks, and cords might be used over and over again for an indefinite time. Further, bedsteads could be made in a similar way, by short cross-planks lashed together, and resting on a framework of horizontal poles, lashed to uprights planted in the ground. The soldier's bedding would not be injured by being used on these bedsteads, as much as if it were laid on the bare ground. Kinds of designs and experiments in hutting could be practised without expense in this simple way.

Tarpaulings are very suitable for roofs. Those made after the method used by sailors are much superior to others in softness and durability. The plan is as follows:--As soon as the canvas has been sewn together, it is thoroughly wetted with sea-water; and, while still wet, it is smeared over on one of its sides with tar and grease, boiled together--about two parts tar and one of grease. After being hung up till it is dry, it is turned; and the other side, being a second time well wetted, is at once painted over with the tar and grease, just as the first side had been before. The sailors say that "the tar dries in, as the water dries out;" a saying which I confess I cannot understand.

Other Materials.--I will merely mention these by name, for they require no explanation. They are fascines or faggots; bricks, sun-dried or baked in the oven; turf; stones; and bags or mats, filled with sand or shingle.

Whitewash is lime and water. Lime is made by burning limestone, chalk, shells, or coral in a simple furnace.

Roofs.--Thatching.--After the framework of the roof has been made, the thatcher begins at the bottom, and ties a row of bundles of straw, side by side, on to the framework. Then he begins a second row, allowing the ends of the bundles composing it to overlap the heads of those in the first row.

Wood-shingles are tile-shaped slices of wood, easily cut from fir-trees. They are used for roofing, on the same principle as tiles or slates.

Floors.--Concrete for floors, is made of eight parts large pebbles, four parts river-sand, and one part lime (to make lime, see "Whitewash"). Cow-dung and ashes make a hard, dry, and clean floor; such as is used for a threshing-floor. Ox blood and fine clay kneaded together are excellent. Both these latter compositions are in use in all hot dry countries.

Windows.--A window, or rather a hole in the wall, may be rudely shuttered by a stick run through loops made out of wisps of grass. In hot weather, the windows of the hutmay be loosely stuffed with grass, which, when watered, makes the hut cooler.

Glass, to cut.--Glass cannot be cut with any certainty, without a diamond; but it may be shaped and reduced to any size by gradually chipping, or rather biting, away at its edges with a key, if the slit between the wards of the key be just large enough to admit the pane of glass easily.

Substitutes for glass.--These are waxed or oiled paper or cloth, bladder, fish-membranes, talc, and horn. (See "Horn.")

SLEEPING-BAGS.

Sleeping-bags.--Knapsack Bags.--These have been used for the last twenty-five years by the French 'douaniers', who watch the mountain-passes of the Pyrenean frontier. The bags are made of sheepskin, with the wool inside. When not in use they are folded up and buckled with five buckles into the shape of a somewhat bulky knapsack (p. 152), which the recent occupant may shoulder and walk away with.

The accompanying sketches are drawn to scale. They were made from the sleeping-bag belonging to a man 5 feet 6 inches in height; the scale should therefore be lengthened for a taller person, but the breadth seems ample. Its weight was exactly seven pounds. The douaniers post themselves on watch more or less immersed in these bags. They lie out in wet and snow, and find them impervious to both. When they sleep, they get quite inside them, stuff their cloaks between their throats and the bag, and let its flap cover their faces. It is easy enough for them to extricate themselves; they can do so almost with a bound. The Spanish Custom-house officers who watch the same frontier, use their cloaks and other wraps, which are far more weighty, and far inferior in warmth and protection to the bags. I described these knapsack bags in 'Vacation Tourists for 1860,' p. 449, and I subsequently had a macintosh bag lined with drugget, made on the same principle. I had a hood to it, and also the means of buttoning it loosely under my chin, to make myself watertight during heavy rain. In that bag I passed many nights of very trying weather. On one instance, I selected a hilltop in Switzerland, on the way from Chambery to the Dent du Midi, during a violent and long-continued thunderstorm. The storm began above my head, then slowly sank to my level, and finally subsided below me. Many Alpine travellers, notably Mr. Packe and Mr. Tuckett, have adopted these bags, and used them continually. Macintosh is certainly oppressive to sleep in, though less so than might have been expected, as the half-unconscious fidgeting of the sleeper changes the air. A man in travelling "condition" would probably find a drugget-bag more healthy than macintosh, even though he became somewhat wet inside it. Beds used to be almost unknown in some parts of the Pyrenees. Sheepskin sleeping-bags were employed instead. Thus, I am assured that at the beginning of this century, there was hardly a bed in the whole of the little republic of Andorre. The way of arranging them as knapsacks is, as I have said, a recent invention.

In fig. 1 the wide opening to the mouth of the bag is shown; also the ends of the buckles and straps that are sewn (on patches of leather, for additional strength) to the lower side of the bag, as seen in fig. 2.