sy; and
as warmth comes next to food, and a blaze both scares wild animals and
looks cheerful, I advise some attention to be paid to the fire. There
must be a good collection of old fallen logs, if possible, together
with some green wood to prevent too rapid a consumption of fuel. But
the fire is not yet made.

First tear off a bit of your shirt and rub it with moistened gunpowder.
Wind this in a thick roll round your ramrod just below the point of the
screw, with the rough torn edge uppermost. Into these numerous folds
sprinkle a pinch of gunpowder; then put a cap on the point of the
screw, and a slight tap with your hunting-knife explodes it and ignites
the linen.

Now, fire in its birth requires nursing like a young baby, or it will
leave you in the lurch. A single spark will perhaps burn your
haystacks, but when you want a fire it seldom will burn, out of sheer
obstinacy; therefore, take a wisp of dry grass, into which push the
burning linen and give it a rapid, circular motion through the air,
which will generally set it in a blaze.

Then pile gently upon it the smallest and driest sticks, increasing
their size as the fire grows till it is all right; and you will sit
down proudly before your own fire, thoroughly confident that you are
the first person that ever made one properly.

There is some comfort in that; and having manufactured your own house
and bed, you will lie down snugly and think of dinner till you fall
asleep, and the crowing of the jungle-cocks will wake you in the
morning.

The happiest hours of my life have been passed in this rural solitude.
I have started from home with nothing but a couple of blankets and the
hounds, and, with one blanket wrapped round me I have slept beneath a
capital tent formed of the other with two forked sticks and a
horizontal pole--the ends of the blanket being secured by heavy stones,
thus--

This is a more comfortable berth than it may appear at first sight,
especially if one end is stopped up with boughs. The ridge-pole being
only two feet and a half high, renders it necessary to crawl in on
all-fours; but this lowness of ceiling has its advantages in not
catching the wind, and likewise in its warmth. A blanket roof, well
secured and tightly strained, will keep off the heaviest rain for a
much longer period than a common tent; but in thoroughly wet weather
any woven roof is more or less uncomfortable.

I recollect a certain bivouac in the Angora patinas f