I'

VI. General Scouting Outdoors

Rubbing-Stick Fire

HAVE certainly made a thousand fires with rubbing

sticks, and have made at least five hundred different experiments. So far as I can learn, my own record of thirty-one seconds from taking the sticks to having the fire ablaze is the world's record, and I can safely promise this: That every boy who will follow the instructions I now give will certainly succeed in making his rubbingstick fire.

Take a piece of dry, sound, balsam-fir wood (or else cedar, cypress, tamarac, basswood or cottonwood, in order of choice) and make of it a drill and a block, thus:

Drill. Five eighths of an inch thick, twelve to fifteen inches long; roughly rounded, sharpened at each end as in the cut (Cut I a).

Block, or board, two inches wide, six or eight inches long, five eighths of an inch thick. In this block, near one end, cut a side notch one half an inch deep, wider on the under side; and near its end half an inch from the edge make a little hollow or pit in the top of the block, as in the illustration (Cut I b).

Tinder. For tinder use a wad of fine, soft, very dry, dead grass mixed with shredded cedar bark, birch bark or even cedar wood scraped into a soft mass.

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Bow. Make a bow of any bent stick two feet long, with a strong buckskin or belt-lacing thong on it (Cut 1 c). Socket. Finally, you need a socket. This simple little thing is made in many different ways. Sometimes I use a pine or hemlock knot with a pit one quarter inch deep, made by boring with the knife point. But it is a great help to have a good one made of a piece of smooth, hard stone or marble, set in wood; the stone or marble having in it a smooth, round pit three eighths inch wide and three eighths inch deep. The one I use most was made by the Eskimo. A view of the under side is shown in Cut 1 (fig. d).

Now, we are ready to make the fire:

Under the notch in the fire-block set a thin chip.

Turn the leather thong of the bow once around the drill: the thong should now be quite tight. Put one point of the drill into the pit of the block, and on the upper end put the socket, which is held in the left hand, with the top of the drill in the hole of the stone (as in Cut 2). Hold the left wrist against the left shin, and the left foot on the fire-block. Now, draw the right hand back and forth steadily on level and the full length of the bow. This causes the drill to twirl in the pit. Soon it bores in, grinding out powder,

which presently begins to smoke. When there is a great volume of smoke from a growing pile of black powder, you know that you have the spark. Cautiously lift the block, leaving the smoking powder on the chip. Fan this with your hand till the live coal appears. Now, put a wad

2. Ready to make fire

of the tinder gently on the spark; raise the chip to a convenient height, and blow till it bursts into flame.

N. B. (1) The notch must reach the middle of the fire-pit. (2) You must hold the drill steadily upright, and cannot do so without bracing the left wrist against the left shin, and having the block on a firm foundation.

(3) You must begin lightly and slowly, pressing heavily and sawing fast after there is smoke.

(4) If the fire does not come, it is because you have not followed these instructions.

HIKING IN THE SNOW

In the suggested programs I have given a number of outlines for one-day hikes. For those who wish to find out

what animals live near there is no time better than when the snow is on the ground.

I remember a hike of the snow-track kind that afforded myself and two boy friends a number of thrills, more than twenty-five years ago.

There were three of us out on a prowl through the woods, looking for game. We saw no live thing, but there had been a fall of soft snow, a few days before; tracks were abundant, and I proposed that each of us take a track and follow it through thick and thin, until he found the beast, which, if living and free, was bound to be at the other end of the line; or, until he found its den. Then, each should halloa to let the others know that his quarry was holed. Close by were the tracks of a mink and of two skunks. The

mink-track was my guide. It led southward. I followed it through swamps and brushwood, under logs, and into promising nooks. Soon I crossed the trail of the youngest boy, closely pursuing his skunk. Later, I met my friend of skunk No. 2, but our trails diverged. Now I came to a long hill down which my mink had tobogganed six or eight feet, after the manner of the otter. At last the trail came to an end in a perfect labyrinth of logs and brush. I went all around this. The snow was clear and smooth. My mink was certainly in this pile. So I let off a long halloa and got an answer from one of the boys, who left his trail and came to me within a few minutes. It happened that this one, Charlie, was carrying a bag with a ferret in it, that

we had brought in the hope that we might run to earth a rabbit; and this particular ferret was, like everything his owner had, "absolutely the best in Canada." He claimed that it could kill rats, six at a time; that it could drive a fox out of its hole; that it was not afraid of a coon; while a skunk or a mink was simply beneath its notice. I now suggested that this greatest of ferrets be turned in after the mink, while we watched around the pile of logs.

I never did like a ferret. He is such an imp of murder incarnate. It always gives me the creeps to see the bloodthirsty brute, like a four-legged snake, dive into some hole,

Skunk track

with death and slaughter as his job. I hate him; but, after all, there is something thrilling and admirable about his perfectly diabolical courage. How would one of us like to be sent alone into a dark cave, to find out and fight some unknown monster, much larger than ourselves, and able, for aught we know, to tear us into pieces in a moment!

But the ferret never faltered; he dived into the log labyrinth. It was a small ferret and a big mink; I awaited anxiously. After a long silence, we saw our four-footed partner at the farther end, unruffled, calm and sinuous.