nch would have been more expensive, and much
less healthful.

For an hour and a half tongues and fingers are busy around the hemlock
tops; then a thin, long volume of blue smoke rises near the spring, and
the boys walk over to inspect the range. They find it made as follows:
Two logs six feet long and eight inches thick are laid parallel, but
seven inches apart at one end and only four at the other. They are
bedded firmly and flattened a little on the inside. On the upper sides
the logs are carefully hewed and leveled until pots, pans and kettles
will sit firmly and evenly on them. A strong forked stake is driven at
each end of the space, and a cross-pole, two or three inches thick,
laid on, for hanging kettles. This completes the range; simple, but
effective. (See illustration.) The broad end of the space is for frying
pans, and the potato kettle. The narrow end, for coffee pots and
utensils of lesser diameter. From six to eight dishes can be cooked at
the same time. Soups, stews, and beans are to be cooked in closely
covered kettles hung from the cross-pole, the bottoms of the kettles
reaching within some two inches of the logs. With a moderate fire they
may be left to simmer for hours without care or attention.

The fire is of the first importance. Start it with fine kindling and
clean, dry, hemlock bark. When you have a bright, even fire from end to
end of the space, keep it up with small fagots of the sweetest and most
wholesome woods in the forest. These are, in the order named, black
birch, hickory, sugar maple, yellow birch, and red beech. The sticks
should be short, and not over two inches across. Split wood is better
than round. The outdoor range can be made by one man in little more
than an hour, and the camper-out, who once tries it, will never wish to
see a "portable camp-stove" again.

When the sun leaves the valley in the shade of Asaph Mountain, the
boys have a fragrant bed of elastic browse a foot deep in the shanty,
with pillows improvised from stuffed boot legs, cotton handkerchiefs,
etc. They cook their suppers on the range, and vote it perfect, no
melting or heating handles too hot for use, and no smoking of dishes,
or faces.

Just at dark--which means 9 P.M. in the last week of June--the fire is
carefully made and chinked. An hour later it is throwing its grateful
warmth and light directly into camp, and nowhere else. The camp turns
in. Not to wriggle and quarrel with obdurate stubs, but to sle