Part 14
"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.
[Sketch of straw walls].
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:--
[Sketch of loom].
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.
[Sketch of fastening].
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.
[Sketch].
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.
[Fig 1 and 2].
It must be understood that the woolly sides of the skins are inwards. The straps that hold the knapsack to the shoulders are secured by a simple fastening, shown in figs. 2 and 3. But the ordinary knapsack hooks and rings, if procurable, would answer the purpose better. The straight lines in fig. 1 show the way in which the bag is to be folded into the shape of fig. 3. Fig. 4 shows the sleeper inside his bag, in which he fits very like a grub in its cocoon. There is no waste of space. For the sake of warmth, the bag is made double from the knees downwards, and also opposite to the small of the back.
[Figs 3 and 4].
During the daytime, when the weather is wet or cold, the bags are of much use, for the douaniers sit with them pulled up to their waist. When carried in the manner of a knapsack the bag sits perfectly well against the shoulders; but, owing to the yielding nature of its substance, it lies too close to the back, and is decidedly oppressive. A wicker frame might well be interposed.
Arctic Sleeping-bags.--Arctic travellers use coarse drugget bags, covered with brown holland to make them less pervious to the wind, and having a long flap at the upper end to fold down over the face. I have already extracted passages from travellers' accounts relating to them, in speaking of "Encamping on Snow," p. 140, and another, when speaking of "Snow-walls with Tenting for their Roofs," p. 143.
Macintosh Sack.--Mr. Falconer writes to me as follows:--"I travelled in 1841 from Austin in Texas to Mexico through New Mexico. I left Austin in June, and reached Zacateras on Christmas Day. During nearly the whole period we travelled from Austin to New Mexico, I camped without any covering at night for myself, except a large macintosh, made up as a sack, with a piece so laid as a continuation of one side, as to be used as a coverlet, sufficient in length to be brought from the back, over the head, and down on the breast. Inside I placed my blankets. I slept under this covering during many a heavy storm at night, and got out of my soft-coated shell dry in the morning. My opinion is, that every traveller who works his way with a horse should fix on his own saddle the said macintosh sack, two blankets, a tin cup, and a frying-pan. It is amazing, when you get into real working order, how few things are sufficient."
Peasants' Sack.--The peasants in the northern parts of Germany use a strong linen sack, made to draw at one end. This they stuff with straw, hay, dry leaves, etc.; and, putting their feet into it, pull its mouth up to their armpits. They use them when driving their wagons in winter, and when lodging at their wretched roadside inns. (See a letter in the Times, February 125.)
Bag, combined with Tent.--I should think that a combination of a sleeping bag with a very small tent, just large enough to enclose the man's head and shoulders, so as to permit him to eat or write when lying in his bag without fear of the wet would be the smallest and lightest arrangement, compatible with efficiency, in a stormy climate.
TENTS.
General Remarks.--Although tents are not worth the trouble of pitching, on dry nights, in a healthy climate, they are invaluable protectors to a well-equipped traveller against rain, dew, and malaria. But a man who is not so equipped, who has no change of clothes, and no bedstead to sleep on, will do better to sleep in the open air, in front of a good camp fire. Napoleon I., speaking of soldiers, says ('Maximes de Guerre'):--"Tents are not healthy; it is better for the soldier to bivouac, because he sleeps with his feet to the fire, whose neighbourhood quickly dries the ground on which he lies; some planks or a little straw shelter him from the wind. Nevertheless a tent is necessary for superior officers, who have need to write and to consult a map." To a party encamped for a few days, tents are of great use as storehouses for property, which otherwise becomes scattered about, at the risk of being lost or pilfered.
Materials for Tenting.--Light canvas is usually employed, and is, to all intents and purposes, waterproof. Silk, of equal strength with the canvas, is very far lighter: its only disadvantage is its expense. Calico, or cotton canvas, is very generally used for small tents. Leather and felt are warm, but exceedingly heavy; and would only be used in very inclement climates, or where canvas could not be met with. Light matting is not to be despised: it is warm and pretty durable, and makes excellent awning or covering to a frame-work.
Diagonal Bracing.--A worn-out tent may be strengthened by sewing bands of canvas, which cross each other, and make a kind of net-work: old sails are strengthened in this way.
Tent Pegs should be of galvanized iron; they are well worth the weight of carriage, for not only do wooden ones often fail on an emergency, but cooks habitually purloin them when firewood is scarce.
Tents.--Large Tents.--The art of tent-making has greatly advanced since the days of the old-fashioned bell-tent, which is so peculiarly objectionable, as to make it a matter of surprise that it was ever invented and used. It is difficult to pitch; it requires many tent-pegs; it has ropes radiating all round it, over which men and horses stumble; and it is incommodious and ugly.
In choosing a tent, select one that will stand in some sort of shape with only four pegs, or with six at the very utmost; it should admit of being pegged close to the ground without any intervening 'fly;' it is no objection that it should require more than one pole; and, when considering how much weight it will be possible to carry, it must be borne in mind that the tent will become far heavier than it is found to be in the peculiarly dry atmosphere of a tent-maker's show-room. It is very convenient that a tent should admit of being pitched in more than one form: for instance, that one side should open and form an awning in hot weather; also, that it should be easy to attach flys or awning to the tent to increase its available size during the daytime. All tents should be provided with strong covers, for pack-ropes are sure to fray whatever they press against; and it is better that the cover should suffer than the tent itself.
Comparative Size of Tents.--The annexed diagram will show the points on which the roominess of a tent mainly depends.
[Sketch of tent and occupants].
A man wants space to sit at a table, and also to get at his luggage in order either to pack it or to unpack it; lastly, he wants a reasonable amount of standing room. A fair-sized tent ought to include the figures drawn in the diagram; and I have indicated, by lines and shaded spaces, the section of various descriptions of tents that would be just sufficient to embrace them.
One side of the ordinary conical tents (fig. 1), of a front view of fig. 5, and of pyramidal tents (fig. 6), are represented by the line ABC. Those that have a "fall" (fig. 2), by the lines CDLF. Gipsy-tents, as described p. 161, umbrella-tents (fig. 4), and Jourts, p. 157, by the lines GHBK. Marquees (fig. 3), and a side view of fig. 5, by GLBM.
[Fig 1-4--sketches of tents].
Notwithstanding the great height and width of conical tents, compared to the others, we see by the diagram that they afford scanty space at the level of the head of a seated person. There is a recent contrivance by Major Rhodes, to be seen at Silver and Co.'s, that is a modification of the gipsy-tent. Among ordinary, well-known tents, I believe none will satisfy the varied wants of a traveller so well as Edington's three-poled tents (fig. 5). After these I should choose a small marquee (fig. 3); but it is less secure in wind, and the pitch of its roof is bad for rain, and the numerous straggling tent-ropes are objectionable.
[Fig 5-7--sketches of tents].