g. Indian Sagacity.

BIVOUACS AND TENTS.

In traveling with pack animals it is not always convenient or
practicable to transport tents, and the traveler's ingenuity is often
taxed in devising the most available means for making himself
comfortable and secure against winds and storms. I have often been
astonished to see how soon an experienced voyager, without any
resources save those provided by nature, will erect a comfortable
shelter in a place where a person having no knowledge of woodcraft
would never think of such a thing.

Almost all people in different parts of the world have their own
peculiar methods of bivouacking.

In the severe climate of Thibet, Dr. Hooker informs us that they encamp
near large rocks, which absorb the heat during the day, and give it out
slowly during the night. They form, as it were, reservoirs of caloric,
the influence of which is exceedingly grateful during a cold night.

In the polar regions the Esquimaux live and make themselves comfortable
in huts of ice or snow, and with no other combustible but oil.

The natives of Australia bury their bodies in the sand, keeping their
heads only above the surface, and thus sleep warm during the chilly
nights of that climate.

Fortunately for the health and comfort of travelers upon the Plains,
the atmosphere is pure and dry during the greater part of the year, and
it is seldom that any rain or dew is seen; neither are there marshes or
ponds of stagnant water to generate putrid exhalations and poisonous
malaria. The night air of the summer months is soft, exhilarating, and
delightful. Persons may therefore sleep in it and inhale it with
perfect impunity, and, indeed, many prefer this to breathing the
confined atmosphere of a house or tent.

During the rainy season only is it necessary to seek shelter. In
traveling with covered wagons one always has protection from storms,
but with pack trains it becomes necessary to improvise the best
substitutes for tents.

A very secure protection against storms may be constructed by planting
firmly in the ground two upright poles, with forks at their tops, and
crossing them with a light pole laid in the forks. A gutta-percha
cloth, or sheet of canvas, or, in the absence of either of these two,
blankets, may be attached by one side to the horizontal pole, the
opposite edge being stretched out to the windward at an angle of about
forty-five degrees to the ground, and there fastened with wooden pins,
o