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Young Knights of the Empire

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bridge over the fire. The great art is to begin with a very _small_ fire and a _very_ dry one. You can then add to its size as you please later on, and when it is going strong you can add damper wood if dry wood is scarce. Birch-bark cannot be found everywhere, but it is the best of lighting tinder when you have it. The channel between the stones is much better if laid so as to face the breeze. The fire can then be kept going at the mouth of it, and the heat will blow through; a bigger kind of log can be put in from the other end to catch fire and add to the heat in the channel. Of course, there are plenty of other ways of making fires, which you can read about in _Scouting for Boys_, but this is the particular kind of cooking fire that we used in my Norwegian camp. At night, when we had cooked our supper and the night was getting chilly, of course, we put on big logs laid across each other, and so got a big, star-shaped fire to make a blaze to warm us, But we kept a good watch on any sparks to see that they didn't touch the moss or heather, and when we turned in, we trod out the fire and poured water over the whole of the ashes, so as to prevent any chance of embers blowing out into flame again during the night and setting light to the grass. Scouts cannot be too careful in this matter, especially in England, where landowners are very good at lending their ground to troops for camping, but are naturally very nervous all the time lest by some carelessness a grass fire may get started, and thousands of pounds' worth of timber or property get burnt. Early in the morning we were to leave our rest-house near the railway in order to drive (and partly to walk) to the place where we were going to make our headquarters. This was forty-nine kilometres distant. How many miles is that? As kilometres are generally used abroad for telling distances, a Scout ought to know how to compare the two and here is a simple way of doing it: Multiply your number of kilometres by five and divide the result by eight, and you will have the number of miles. Thus: We want to know how many miles our forty-nine kilometres are. 49 5 --- 8)245 --- 30 5/8 or about 30 1/2 miles. As I have said, we were to leave early, but we found that the Norwegian idea of early is not so very early as with us in England. They thought eight o'clock breakfast very early, and the cart, which was supposed to start at nine, did not get away till 10:30. It was a little ramshackle sort of dogcart with a very high seat, which just gave standing room for us among our baggage, while the boy in charge of the pony hung on as best he could behind. The pony was fine and strong and fat, but awfully sedate; in fact, it was only after a lot of persuasion that we got him to move at a trot, and then it was a marvellously slow trot. However, I found that if one showed him the spare end of the rope reins, and offered to strike him with it, he mended his pace considerably. He kept his eye on me all the time-- The Norwegians seem to be very kind to their animals. They don't use whips or blinkers or bearing-reins on their horses and before we had gone very far the boy in charge considered it time to unharness and feed his horse for a few minutes. We walked on while he did so, and as it wasn't for an hour and a half that he overtook us again, we guessed he had given the horse a very fine feed indeed. [Illustration: THE HORSE KEPT HIS EYE ON ME ALL THE WAY.] We didn't do ourselves badly, either, because all along the road, which ran through beautiful woods along the hillside, we found lots of excellent raspberries growing wild. We changed ponies half-way: but when we had got nearly to our journey's end, the boy said he must stop and feed the horse. We said: "No; it is only four or five miles more, and the pony will be home." But the boy began to cry at our cruelty, so we had to stop and let the horse graze. It was very pleasing to see that they are so kind to their animals. I have said that I was not one day in Norway before I saw a Boy Scout. Well, I was not two days in the country before I saw a Girl Guide. Correctly dressed in the same kits those in England, with her patrol

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