Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Young Knights of the Empire

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make your sleeping bag a double one; you can then fill the lower part with straw, and sleep yourself in the upper compartment. The object of having long flaps is seen in the illustration. The lower one can be rolled with your spare clothes inside it to form your pillow, while the upper one can be supported by a crossbar to form a little roof over your head. In a sleeping bag of this kind, if waterproof, you can sleep out without a tent at all. * * * * * HOW TO MAKE A CAMP BED. A very simple and comfortable form of camp bed-and one which you can easily rig up and use in your home, or at an inn, if a bedstead is not available-is this: Make a "hasty stretcher" with two staves and a sack, and lay the ends of the staves on a couple of logs, stones, or boxes. [Illustration: READY FOR USE.] Keep the staves apart by crossbars, and you have a most comfortable bed. But don't forget to put plenty of blankets, and some thick paper, if you are short of blankets underneath you. This bed is the best possible one to use when you have to camp on damp ground. * * * * * HOW A TENDERFOOT SITS DOWN. In camp you can generally tell a tenderfoot from an old scout from the way in which he sits down. [Illustration: THE WRONG WAY.] A tenderfoot sits right down on the ground, but the old hand, knowing that this is very likely to give you chill and bring on fever, rheumatism, or other ailments, either squats on his heel, or on both heels--which comes all the more easy if you put a stone under each heel as a support, or if you have your back against a tree. [Illustration: THE RIGHT WAY.] When an old scout sits on the ground, he always takes care either to sit on his hat, or on a bundle of dry heather, or something that will keep him off the actual ground. [Illustration: HOW AN OLD HAND SITS DOWN.] Two ex-Boy Scouts, now officers in the Army, sent me a contribution to our funds lately, as a thanks offering for all the campaigning dodges which they had learnt as Scouts and which had been most helpful to them on active service. So practise all you can of these tips which I have given: you never know when they may not come in useful to you. TRAINING AND TRACKING ZULU TRAINING. The native boys of the Zulu and Swazi tribes learn to be Scouts before they are allowed to be considered men, and they do it in this way: When a boy is about fifteen or sixteen, he is taken by the men of his village, stripped of all clothes, and painted white from head to foot, and he is given a shield and one assegai or small spear, and he is turned out of the village and told that he will be killed if anyone catches him while he is still painted white. So the boy has to go off into the jungle and mountains and hide himself from other men until the white paint wears off, and this generally takes about a month; so that all this time he has to look after himself and stalk game with his one assegai, and kill it and cut it up; he has to light his fire by means of rubbing sticks together in order to cook his meat; he has to make the skin of the animal into a covering for himself; and he has to know what kinds of wild roots, berries, and leaves are good for food as vegetables. If he is not able to do these things he dies of starvation, or is killed by wild animals. If he succeeds in keeping himself alive, and is able to find his way back to his village, he returns when the white paint has worn off, and is then received with great rejoicings by his friends and relatives, and is allowed to become a soldier of the tribe, since he has shown that he is able to look after himself. * * * * * TRACKING BY TOUCH. General Dodge, of the American Army, describes how he once had to pursue a party of Red Indians who had been murdering some people. The murderers had nearly a week's start, and had gone away on horseback. Rut General Dodge got a splendid tracking-scout named Espinosa to help him. The Indians were all riding unshod horses except one, and after Espinosa had been tracking them for many miles he suddenly got off his horse and pulled four horseshoes out of a hidden crevice in the rocks. The Indian had evidently pulled them off so that

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