to
keep rain and vermin away from the food. Tell your grocer to pack the
stuff for a camping trip and to put the perishable things in tight
boxes as far as possible.

If you are going to move camp, have some waterproof bags for the
flour. If you can carry eggs and butter, so much the better. A tin
cracker box buried in the mud along some cold brook or spring makes an
excellent camper's refrigerator especially if it is in the shade.
Never leave the food exposed around camp. As soon as the cook is
through with it let some one put it away in its proper place where the
flies, ants, birds, sun, dust, and rain cannot get at it.

Always examine food before you cook it. Take nothing for granted. Once
when camping the camp cook for breakfast made a huge pot of a certain
brand of breakfast food. We were all tucking it away as only hungry
boys can, when some one complained that caterpillars were dropping
from the tree into his bowl. We shifted our seats--and ate some more,
and then made the astonishing discovery that the breakfast food was
full of worms. We looked at the package and found that the grocers had
palmed off some stale goods on us and that the box was fairly alive.
We all enjoy the recollection of it more than we did the actual
experience.

It is impossible in a book of this kind to say very much about how to
cook. That subject alone has filled some very large books. We can
learn some things at home provided that we can duplicate the
conditions in the woods. So many home recipes contain eggs, milk and
butter that they are not much use when we have none of the three.
There is a book in my library entitled "One Hundred Ways to Cook Eggs"
but it would not do a boy much good in the woods unless he had the
eggs. If you ask your mother or the cook to tell you how to raise
bread or make pies and cakes, be sure that you will have the same
ingredients and tools to work with that she has.

It might be well to learn a few simple things about frying and
boiling, as both of these things can be done even by a beginner over
the camp fire. There are a few general cooking rules that I will
attempt to give you and leave the rest for you to learn from
experience.

You use bacon in the woods to furnish grease in the frying pan for
the things that are not fat enough themselves to furnish their own
grease.

Condensed milk if thinned with water makes a good substitute for sweet
milk, after you get used to it.

To make coffee, all