After a delightful little voyage in one of the smart Wilson Line
steamers, I arrived one morning early in Christiania, the capital of
Norway.
The town is an ordinary Continental town, but stands on the shores of
an arm of the sea which is so shut in by wooded hills for some twenty
miles that it is more like an inland lake than a gulf of the ocean.
What a place for Sea Scouts!
One of the first Norwegian boys to attract my attention was a Boy
Scout--so like an English Scout that he may have been one for all I
know, but I was not able to speak to him, I was catching a train, and
he was going off in a hurry in another direction, evidently in
trouble, as he was whistling and smiling! And it is difficult to tell
a Norwegian boy from an English boy by his appearance, for they are
very much alike.
And so are the girls and young women very like their British sisters.
But then, as we all came of the same blood in bygone times, it is not
altogether surprising.
Then their Royal Family is related to ours, for Queen Maud, the wife
of King Haakon, is sister of our own King.
So Norwegians have much in common with the English, and since my visit
Scouts of the two countries have become good friends and camped with
each other.
There could be no better country than this for camping out. As you
come through it in the train, you keep passing among wooded hills and
then alongside rivers and lakes; a great deal of wild country with
occasional cultivated parts where there are neat little wooden
farmsteads and villages.
The houses are painted bright colours, and are roofed with tiles or
shingles, that is, wooden slates, as in Canada. In fact, with its
forests, lakes, and rivers, and their floating timber, and the
sawmills, the country generally is not unlike Canada.
As wood is so abundant here, farm Scouts will be interested to see
from the picture how they make their fences in place of hedges or
ordinary post-and-rails. It is a kind of fence that you can make
easily with almost any kind of slats or with brushwood or branches.
[Illustration: A NORWEGIAN FENCE.]
A way which the Norwegian woodmen have of piling their small timber in
the woods in order to dry it is one which might also be useful to
Scouts when making a bivouac-hut, where there are plenty of saplings.
You pile them as shown in the picture, all with their butts or thick
ends together to windward, and thin ends splayed outwards.
When you have got this frame together you can cover it with a
waterproof sheet, or straw mat, or brushwood, to keep out the weather,
and light your fire opposite the opening.
In my camp I had one friend, George.
[Illustration: AN EASILY-MADE BIVOUAC HUT]
We found a good site on the bank of a rushing roaring river between
high hills covered with forest. We were thirty-five miles from the
nearest railway station, and about four miles from a farm, where we
got our butter and our milk. The river supplied our fish, and we shot
our own game.
We carried just enough kit to make a load for a pack-pony--a bundle of
about 50lb. weight on each side of him. There were no roads, and a
pack-pony is the only means of carrying heavy luggage, such as tents,
etc.
We each had our bivouac tent, bedding, change of clothes, cooking
pots, and fishing rods, etc.
Of course, we did our own cooking, woodcutting, and cleaning up. And
cleaning up is a very important part of camp work.
Our camp was small and never likely to be seen by anybody besides
ourselves, but it was always kept very neat and tidy, and we could
shift camp at any moment, and leave scarcely a sign that we had been
there. That is how Scouts should always have their camp--everything in
its place, so that you can find anything you want at a moment's notice
in the event of a sudden turn out in the dark, or for shutting up for
a sudden rain squall.
All scraps of food should be burnt or buried, and not thrown about
round the camp. On service these scraps would be good "sign" to an
enemy's scouts as to who had occupied the camp, and how long ago, and
how well off they were for provisions, and so on.
Another reason against letting your camp ground get dirty is that it
quickly becomes the camping place also of thousands of flies. If you
have flies in camp it is a sign that the camp is not kept clean.
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