Unexplored!. Chaffee Allen
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Название: Unexplored!
Автор: Chaffee Allen
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
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They could walk a log with their packs to cross a stream, or, packs removed and pullied across, they could swim it, if they were started up current and left to guide themselves. They would not slip on smooth rock ledges, they could hop up or down bowlders like so many bipeds. It was a constant marvel to Ace and Pedro what they could do. No lead ropes were necessary at all.
Long Lester was meticulous in their care. Every afternoon when the packs were removed he sponged their backs with cold water. And though the party was on its way by seven every morning, – having risen with the first light of dawn, – and though by ten they would have covered half of their average twelve miles a day, the old guide never watered them till the sun was warm, which was generally not till after the middle of the forenoon. For a wilderness trip comes to grief when any one member, man or beast, gives out, as he knew from a lifetime of experience in that rugged and unpeopled region.
They had figured on about three pounds of food per day per person, for the four weeks’ trip. That loaded each burro with a grub list of ninety pounds, and about ten pounds of personal equipment, besides the axes and aluminums and such incidentals as soap and matches. Ease of packing was secured by slipping into each of the food kyacks a case such as those in which a pair of five gallon coal oil cans come.
Their kit included neats’ foot oil, (scrupulously packed), for the wearing qualities of their footwear along those stony trails depended in large degree on keeping the leather soft. No mosquito netting was necessary in the mountains, – it was too dry and cool for the insects, – but each member of the party had a pair of buckskin gloves, six good pairs of all wool socks, – worn two at a time to pad the feet against stone-bruise, – extra shoe laces, and a pair of sneakers to rest his feet around camp. Norris carried a pocket telescope, and Long Lester a hone made of the side of a cigar box with fine emery cloth pasted on one side, coarse on the other. They saved on blankets by doubling each into three crosswise, – except the old guide, who was too tall, – and on the higher, colder elevations they found that to wear a fresh wool union suit, and socks warm from the fire, to sleep in, was as good as an extra blanket, if not better.
Everything was to be turn and turn about, – Ace had been the most insistent member of the party in not leaving Long Lester to do the lion’s share, – they were obliged, each in turn, even Norris, to learn certain fundamental rules of cookery. Long Lester got it down to this formula:
Put fresh vegetables into boiling salted water.
Put dried vegetables (peas and beans) into cold, unsalted water.
Soak dried fruit overnight.
To fry, have the pan just barely smoking.
To clean the frying pan, fill it with water and let it boil over, then hang it up to dry. Jab greasy knives into the ground, – provided it is not stony.
You can fry more trout in a pan if you cut off their heads.
As the boiling point drops one degree for every 800 foot rise, twenty hours’ steady cooking will not boil beans in the higher altitudes unless you use soft water. They may be best cooked overnight in a hole lined with coals, if put in when boiling, with the lid of the Dutch oven covered with soil.
Three aluminum pails, nested, provided dish pan and kettles for hot and cold water. Butter packed in pound tins kept fresh indefinitely in those cool heights, and salt and sugar traveled well in waterproof tent silk bags. Long Lester had figured on a minimum of a quarter of a pound each of sugar and bacon per day per person, three pounds of pepper and twenty-five of salt.
Of course the one thing each member carried right on his person was a pepper tin of matches, made waterproof with a strip of adhesive tape. For the snow fields, they also had tinted spectacles, as a precaution against snow-blindness.
Axmanship came to be the chief measure of their campcraft. Ace had wanted to bring one of the double-bitts he saw the lumbermen using, but the old guide vetoed it as more dangerous to the amateur than a butcher knife in the hands of a baby.
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