The Forest | Page 8

his legs were incased in an ordinary rough pair of
miller's white trousers, on which broad strips of red flannel had been
roughly sewn. Everything was wrinkled in the folds of too-bigness. As
though to accentuate the note, the man stood very erect, very military,
and supported in one hand the staff of an English flag. This figure of
fun, this man made from the slop-chest, this caricature of a scarecrow,
had been put forth by heavy-handed facetiousness to the post of
greatest honour. He was Standard-Bearer to the occasion! Surely subtle
irony could go no further.
A sudden movement caused the man to turn. One sleeve of the faded,
ridiculous old cutaway was empty. He turned again. From under the
ear-flanging hat looked unflinchingly the clear, steady blue eye of the
woodsman. And so we knew. This old soldier had come in from the
Long Trail to bear again the flag of his country. If his clothes were old
and ill-fitting, at least they were his best, and the largeness of the empty
sleeve belittled the too-largeness of the other. In all this ribald,
laughing, irreverent, commonplace, semi-vicious crowd he was the one
note of sincerity. To him this was a real occasion, and the exalted
reverence in his eye for the task he was so simply performing was
Smith's real triumph--if he could have known it. We understood now,
we felt the imminence of the Long Trail. For the first time the little
brick, tawdry town gripped our hearts with the well-known thrill of the
Jumping-Off Place. Suddenly the great, simple, unashamed wilderness
drew near us as with the rush of wings.

IV.

ON MAKING CAMP.
"Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight? Who hath heard the birch
log burning? Who is quick to read the noises of the night? Let him
follow with the others, for the young men's feet are turning To the
camps of proved desire and known delight."
In the Ojibway language wigwam means a good spot for camping, a
place cleared for a camp, a camp as an abstract proposition, and a camp
in the concrete as represented by a tent, a thatched shelter, or a conical
tepee. In like manner, the English word camp lends itself to a variety of
concepts. I once slept in a four-poster bed over a polished floor in an
elaborate servant-haunted structure which, mainly because it was built
of logs and overlooked a lake, the owner always spoke of as his camp.
Again, I once slept on a bed of prairie grass, before a fire of dried
buffalo chips and mesquite, wrapped in a single light blanket, while a
good vigorous rain-storm made new cold places on me and under me
all night. In the morning the cowboy with whom I was travelling
remarked that this was "sure a lonesome proposition as a camp."
Between these two extremes is infinite variety, grading upwards
through the divers bivouacs of snow, plains, pines, or hills to the bark
shelter; past the dog-tent, the A-tent, the wall-tent, to the elaborate
permanent canvas cottage of the luxurious camper, the dug-out winter
retreat of the range cowboy, the trapper's cabin, the great log-built
lumber-jack communities, and the last refinements of sybaritic summer
homes in the Adirondacks. All these are camps. And when you talk of
making camp you must know whether that process is to mean only a
search for rattlesnakes and enough acrid-smoked fuel to boil tea, or a
winter's consultation with an expert architect; whether your camp is to
be made on the principle of Omar's one-night Sultan, or whether it is
intended to accommodate the full days of an entire summer.
But to those who tread the Long Trail the making of camp resolves
itself into an algebraical formula. After a man has travelled all day
through the Northern wilderness he wants to rest, and anything that
stands between himself and his repose he must get rid of in as few
motions as is consistent with reasonable thoroughness. The end in view
is a hot meal and a comfortable dry place to sleep. The straighter he can
draw the line to those two points the happier he is.
Early in his woods experience, Dick became possessed with the desire

to do everything for himself. As this was a laudable striving for
self-sufficiency, I called a halt at about three o'clock one afternoon in
order to give him plenty of time.
Now Dick is a good, active, able-bodied boy, possessed of average
intelligence and rather more than average zeal. He even had theory of a
sort, for he had read various "Boy Campers, or the Trapper's Guide,"
"How to Camp Out," "The Science of Woodcraft," and other able
works. He certainly had ideas enough and confidence enough. I sat
down on a