--CAMPING OUT.

A second and more rational way, especially for small parties, is that of
travelling afoot in the roads of a settled country, carrying a blanket,
tent, food, and cooking-utensils; cooking your meals, and doing all the
work yourselves. If you do not care to travel fast, to go far, or to
spend much money, this is a fine way. But let me caution you first of
all about overloading, for this is the most natural thing to do. It is
the tendency of human nature to accumulate, and you will continually
pick up things on your route that you will wish to take along; and it
will require your best judgment to start with the least amount of
luggage, and to keep from adding to it.

You have probably read that a soldier carries a musket, cartridges,
blanket, overcoat, rations, and other things, weighing forty or fifty
pounds. You will therefore say to yourself, "I can carry twenty." Take
twenty pounds, then, and carry it around for an hour, and see how you
like it. Very few young men who read this book will find it possible to
_enjoy_ themselves, and carry more than twenty pounds a greater distance
than ten miles a day, for a week. To carry even the twenty pounds ten
miles a day is hard work to many, although every summer there are
parties who do their fifteen, twenty, and more miles daily, with big
knapsacks on their backs; but it is neither wise, pleasant, nor
healthful, to the average young man, to do this.

Let us cut down our burden to the minimum, and see how much it will be.
First of all, you must take a rubber blanket or a light rubber
coat,--something that will surely shed water, and keep out the dampness
of the earth when slept on. You must have something of this sort,
whether afoot, horseback, with a wagon, or in permanent camp.[2]

For carrying your baggage you will perhaps prefer a knapsack, though
many old soldiers are not partial to that article. There are also for
sale broad straps and other devices as substitutes for the knapsack.
Whatever you take, be sure it has broad straps to go over your
shoulders: otherwise you will be constantly annoyed from their cutting
and chafing you.

You can dispense with the knapsack altogether in the same way that
soldiers do,--by rolling up in your blanket whatever you have to carry.
You will need to take some pains in this, and perhaps call a comrade to
assist you. Lay out the blanket flat, and roll it as tightly as possible
without folding it, enclosing the other bag