side of the tent, to turn aside the water, and to drain the ground on which it stands-even a furrow scratched with a tent-peg is better than nothing at all. Fasten guy-ropes to the spike of the tent-pole, and be careful that the tent is not too much on the strain, else the further shrinking of the materials, under the influence of the rain, will certainly tear up the pegs.

The ground is often such that the tent-pegs will not hold;" if it be sandy, scrape the surface sand away before driving them in, and put a flat stone under the foot of the pole as a step for it to rest on, or it will work a deep hole, and, sinking down, will leave the tent slack and unsteady. If the sand is very deep, it is a common plan to bury sticks or bushes, and to tie the tent corners to the middle of them, instead of to pegs. Heavy saddle-bags are often of use to fasten the tent to, and in rocky ground heavy piles of stones may be made to answer the same purpose.

Natives are apt to creep up, and, putting their hands under the tent, to steal things: a hedge of bushes is some protection against them.

A tent should never be pitched in a slovenly way; it is so far more roomy, secure, and pretty, when tightly stretched out, that no pains should be spared in drilling the men to do it well. I like to use a piece of string, marked with knots, by which I can measure the exact places in which the tent-pegs should be struck; the eye is a very deceitful guide in estimating squareness. It is wonderful how men will bungle over a tent when they are not properly drilled to pitch it.

§ 5. Tent furniture.-A portable bedstead, with musquito curtains, is a very great luxury, raising the sleeper above the damp soil, and the attacks of most creatures that creep on it; in tours where a few luxuries can be carried, it is a very

proper article of baggage. Hammocks and cots have but few advocates, as it is rare to find places adapted for swinging them; they are quite out of place in a small tent.

Chairs and tables. It is advisable to take very low strong and roomy camp-stools, with tables to correspond in height, as a chamber is much less choked up when the seats are low, or when people sit, as in the East, on the ground. The seats should not be more than 1 foot high, though as wide and deep as an ordinary footstool. Habit very soon reconciles travellers to this; but without a seat at all, a man can never write, draw, nor calculate as well as if he has one. The best stool is of this sort, with a full-sized leather or canvass seat, or

The table should be a feet long, by 9 inches

one made of strips of dressed hide. couple of boards, not less than 2 broad, hinged lengthwise together, and resting on a stand, on the same principle as the above chair. It would be well to have it made of common mahogany, for deal warps and cracks excessively. There is no difficulty in carrying furniture like the above on a pack-horse.

§ 6. Rude houses.-In making a dépôt, it is usual to build. a house; often the men have to pass weeks in inactivity, and they may as well spend them in making their quarters comfortable, as in idleness. Whatever huts the natives live in are sure, if made with extra care, to be sufficient for travellers. Cow-dung and ashes make a hard, dry, and clean floor; ox

In

blood and fine clay, kneaded together, is excellent: both these compositions are used in all hot dry countries. building log-huts, four poles are driven in the ground to correspond to the four corners; against these logs are piled, one above another, as in the drawing; they are so deeply notched where they cross one another, that each two adjacent

sides are firmly dovetailed together. When the walls are entirely completed, the door and windows are chopped out. It of course requires a great many trees to make a log-hut; for supposing the walls to be 8 feet high, and the trees to average 8 inches in diameter, it would require 12 trees to build up one side, or 48 to make all four walls.

Fix hooked sticks, and cow or goat horns, round the walls, as pegs to hang things on; and if you want a luxurious bed, make a cartel, which is on the principle of a tennis player's racket, being a framework of wood, with strips of raw hide lashed across it from end to end and from side to side. If you collect bed feathers, recollect that if cleanly plucked they require no dressing of any kind, save drying and beating. Concrete for floors is made of 80 parts large pebbles, 40 river sand, 10 lime: lime is made by burning limestone, chalk, shells, or coral, in a simple furnace, and whitewash is lime and water. Bark makes a good roof. The substitutes for glass are, waxed or oiled

paper or cloth, bladder, fish membranes, talc, and horn (which see). Glass cannot be cut with any certainty without a diamond. A musquito curtain may be taken and suspended over the bed, or place where you sit. It is very pleasant, in hot musquito-plagued countries, to take the glass sash entirely out of the window frame, and replace it with one of gauze. Broad network, if of fluffy thread, keeps wasps out. Straw or reed walls are made of bundles of reeds, nipped between pairs of poles; they can be made movable, so as to suit the wind, shade, and aspect; their edges should be neatly trimmed; even gates can be made on this principle.

CLOTHES, ETC.

§ 1. Articles of Dress.

§ 2. Personal Cleanliness.

§ 1. Articles of dress.

§ 3. Knapsacks, Knives.
§ 4. Dry Clothes.

The importance of flannel next the skin can hardly be overrated; it is now a matter of statistics, for during the progress of expeditions, notes have been made of the number and names of those in them who had provided themselves with flannel, and of those who had not. The list of sick and dead always included names from the latter list in a very great proportion. Next in excellence to flannel comes cotton; according to the common voice of all who know the tropics, linen is very improper, for when the wearer is wet with rain or perspiration, it strikes cold upon the skin; coarse calico shirts, for fine, hot, dry weather, and flannel for damp, windy, or cold, are, I should suggest, the proper dress.

A poncho is very useful, for it is a sheet as well as a cloak, being simply a blanket with a slit in the middle to admit the wearer's head. A sheet of strong calico, saturated with oil, makes a waterproof poncho. Cloth is made partly waterproof by rubbing soap-suds into it (on the wrong side), and working them well in; and when dry, doing the same with a solution of alum; the soap is by this means decomposed, and the oily part of it distributed among the fibres of the cloth.

Coat, waiscoat, and trousers.-A tweed shooting costume is, taking it all in all, the best, but it should be of thick, not thin,