Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Young Knights of the Empire

45 of 87

camp. He would never get through his work if he had them. Yet I often see Boy Scouts go into camp with axes so blunt that they will cut nothing, and their knives very little better. You don't know the pleasure of handling an axe till you have used a really sharp one. And then every Scout ought to know how to sharpen his own axe on a grindstone. You must wet the stone first, and then get someone to turn it, running the wheel away from you, while you lay the blade with its back towards you, and its edge in the same direction as the wheel is moving, and pass it gently on to the stone, doing each side of the blade in turn a little at a time until the whole blade becomes bright, especially at the cutting edge. * * * * * EXPLORING THE GORGE. You remember that George and I went to Jasjvold Saeter in order to get some "reeper," and also to explore the gorge of which we had heard. As you get higher up above the level of the sea, the nature of the country and of the plants changes. In the lower level you get trees and bushes and flowers very much like those in England, but as you rise higher nothing but fir trees, pines, and birch trees seem to grow. Then as you get up a bit the fir trees come to an end, and you find only small birch trees, after which there are no trees. You come out on the open moorland where there is heather, like that in Scotland, and other small shrubs, one of which would interest boys because it grows a very nice little fruit called "blue-berries." Above the heather, that is, at a height of over 4000 feet, you get what is called moss. This is really a kind of lichen like you see growing on trees at home, a pale, yellowish-white, spongy kind of plant, which seems to thrive on barren, rocky mountain sides, and forms feed for the reindeer which run wild in these parts. Well, George and I used to go out from the Saeter directly after breakfast each day, carrying our ruksacks on our backs, and one of us a gun and the other a fishing rod in his hand. And the dogs went with us. In our ruksacks we carried a kettle, some bread, butter, and coffee, and a change of shoes and stockings, for what with wading through streams and stepping into bogs we were pretty wet about the feet before the day was ended. On the first day we went and discovered the head of the gorge, high up on the mountain side, and each day after that we explored a new bit of it till we had followed it down to where it opened on to the valley at its foot. The gorge was a deep cleft in the mountain-side of dark, frowning cliffs, with a bright, clear mountain stream running along among the rocks and stones at its bottom. * * * * * THE TROUT STREAM. The farmer had told us there were no fish in this stream, and nobody ever fished there. However, I thought I might as well use my rod, having brought it all the way there, so, pretending to myself that there was a fish in a swirling little pool behind a great rock, I crept and crawled to a spot from which I could, unseen by the fish, throw my fly so that it could float quietly in the current and be carried round the corner. The first attempt from my crouching position was not a good one; the line did not go out far enough, and merely got into a backwater and drifted in close to me so I shortened it up by pulling in a handful or two, and then shot it out again over the water. This time it fell well out, the thin gut cast falling lightly as a cobweb on the surface, and then sliding off with the current close round the edge of the rock; and just as it went out of sight there was a sudden tug and a steady hold on it! A rock 1 No. The next moment there was a rush and a strain, the rod bending over and showing that a really nice fish was on. [Illustration: OUR DAILY EXCURSION.] I won't tell you all the joy that followed in playing the fish till he was exhausted, and then leading him to a smooth shallow, where, having no landing-net, I could draw him steadily and quickly from the water and up the shelving rock without breaking the delicate line. But I got him! And after him we got many more, enough for all our meals. It was a delightful trout stream, and I could only wish that every Scout in

45 of 87 pages. Go to page:

Go to this Book's Directory Page