HIDING PLACES OR CACHES.

§ 1. To make a Câche.

§ 2. Notices to another Party.

§ 3. Secreting Jewels.

§ 1. To make a câche.-It is easy enough to choose a spot, which you yourself shall again recognise, for digging a hole, where stores of all kinds may be buried, against your return; neither is it difficult to choose one, so that you may indicate its position to others, or else leave it to a party who are travelling in concert, to find it out for themselves. But excessive caution in depositing the stores is, in every case, required, as hungry and thieving natives keep watch on all the movements of a party; they follow their tracks, and hunt over their old camping-places, in search of anything there may be to pick up; and hyenas, wolves, wild dogs, and all kinds of prowling animals, guided by their sharp scent, will soon scratch up any provisions that are buried carelessly, or in such a way as to taint the earth.

Leaving aside the question of landmarks, the proper place to choose for a câche is a sandy or gravelly soil, on account of its dryness and the facility of digging it. Old burrows, or the gigantic hills of white ants, may be thought of, if the stores are enclosed in tin cases, and also clefts in rocks; some things can conveniently be buried under water. The place must be chosen under such circumstances, that all signs of the ground having been disturbed can be effaced. A good plan is to set up your tent, and dig a deep hole inside it,

wrapping up what you have to bury in an oilcloth, in an earthen jar, or wooden vessel, according to what you are able to get (but not in skins, for they give out smell). Continue to inhabit the tent for at least a day, well stamping and smoothing down the soil at leisure. After this, strike the tent, shift the tethering place or kraal of your cattle to where it stood, and they will speedily efface any marks that may be left. Travellers often light their fires over the holes where their stores are buried, but natives are so accustomed to suspect fire places, that these do not prove safe depôts. The natives in Ceylon jerk their game, put the dry meat in the hollow of a tree, fill up the reservoir with honey, and plaster it up with clay.

Large things, as a waggon or boat, must either be pushed into thick bushes or reeds, and left to chance, or they may be buried in sand, that is to say, in a sand drift, or in a sandy deposit by a river side. A small reedy island is a convenient place for câches.

To find your store again, you should have ascertained the distance and bearing by compass of the hole from some marked place, as a tree, about which you are sure not to be mistaken; or from the centre of the place where your fire was made, which is a mark that years will not entirely efface. If there be anything in the ground itself to indicate the position of the hole, you have made a clumsy cache.

It is not a bad plan, after the things are buried, and before the tent is removed, to scratch a furrow a couple of inches deep, and three or four feet long, and to lay a piece of reed, or a wand, in it. These will be easy enough to find again, by making a cross furrow, and when found, will lead you straight above the depôt. They would never excite suspicion,

even if a native got hold of them, for they would appear to have been dropped, or blown on the ground by chance, not seen, and trampled in.

Some explorers number their camps, and mark the trees with the numbers.

§ 2. Notices to another party.-If a letter has to be left at a known tree, for a person who, on his passing by, it may be months after, expects to find it there, a very safe way of doing so is as follows:-Clamber up the tree when it is dark, to the first large bough, and, sitting astride it, cut with a chisel a deep hole right into the substance of the wood, or you may make one by firing a bullet down into it. If possible, the bark should not be cut quite away, but only displaced, and afterwards put back. In this hole the letter, rolled up or folded quite small, is to be pushed, and the bark nailed down over it. No savage would ever dream of looking there for it for the tree shows no tracks, and it is impossible to see any mark from below. The letter might even be nailed flat under a piece of bark. A cut with a hatchet should be made on the tree, a yard or so below the bough, to indicate it.

Marking a tree.-If you want a tree to be well scored or slashed, so as to draw attention to it without fail, fire bullets into it as a mark, and let the natives cut them out for the sake of the lead in their own way; they will do just what you want, and never suspect your real intention. When you have made a câche, if it be for another party who knows nothing about it, take the bearing of it from some large tree or other landmark, on which you must gash, paint, or chisel characters something of this sort,

LETTER BURIED

50 YARDS N.N.E.

E

which explains itself. Savages will, however, take such pains to efface any mark that they may find left by white men, entertaining thoughts like those of Morgiana in the Arabian Nights' Tales of the Forty Thieves, that it would be the height of imprudence to trust to a single mark. It is, therefore, very desirable to take a branding iron to hold letters of about a quarter of an inch in height, and to brand or stamp the tree in many places. A couple of hours spent in doing this would leave, perhaps, two dozen marks, which would be quite beyond the power of a few savages to cut out with their axes.

Black for inscriptions cut in a rock, is made by melting pitch and lampblack together (the letters of tombstones are made black in this way). It may suffice to pick up a common stone, and scratch or paint what you had to say on it, and leave it on the ground, with its written face downwards, at the place indicated by the brands on the tree. A good mark to show that Europeans have visited a spot is a saw mark (no savages use saws); it catches the eye directly. As very many good bushrangers cannot read, rude picture writing is often used by them, especially in America. The figure of a man with a spear or bow drawn, I mean, as a child would draw, stands for a savage; one with a hat or gun, for a European; horses, oxen, sheep; lines for numbers; arrow-head for direction, and so forth. Even without other more conventional symbols, a vast deal may be expressed in this way.

§ 3. Secreting jewels.-Before going among a rich but semicivilised people, travellers sometimes buy a few small jewels, and shut them up into a little silver tube with rounded edges, then making a gash in their skin, they bury it there, allowing the flesh to heal over it. They feel no inconvenience from its presence any more than a once wounded man does from

a bullet lodged in his person, or from a plate of silver set beneath his scalp. The best place for burying it is on the left arm, at the spot chosen for vaccination. By this means, should a traveller be robbed of everything, he could still fall back on his jewels. I fear, however, that if his precious depôt were suspected, any robbers into whose hands he might fall would fairly mince him to pieces in search of further treasures.