There are four ways in which travellers who are thrown upon their own
resources may house themselves. They may bivouac, that is to say, they
may erect a temporary shelter of a makeshift character, partly from
materials found on the spot, and partly from the cloths they may happen
to possess; they may build a substantial hut, which of course takes a
good deal of labour to complete; they may use sleeping-bags; or they may
pitch a regular tent. I will speak of these four methods of encamping,
--the bivouac, the hut, the sleeping-bag, and the tent, in that order.
General Remarks.--Bivouacking is miserable work in a wet or unhealthy
climate; but in a dry and healthy one, there is no question of its
superiority over tenting. Men who sleep habitually in the open, breathe
fresher air and are far more imbued with the spirit of wild life, than
those who pass the night within the stuffy enclosure of a tent. It is an
endless pleasure to lie half awake watching the stars above, and the
picturesque groupings of the encampment round about, and to hear on all
sides the stirrings of animal life. And later in the night, when the fire
is low, and servants and cattle are asleep, and there is no sound but of
the wind and an occasional plaintive cry of wild animals, the traveller
finds himself in that close communion with nature which is the true charm
of wild travel. Now all this pleasure is lost by sleeping in a tent. Tent
life is semi-civilization, and perpetuates its habits. This may be
illustrated by a simple trait; a man who has lived much in bivouacs, if
there be a night alarm, runs naturally into the dark for safety, just as
a wild animal would; but a man who travels with tents becomes frightened
when away from its lights, or from the fancied security of its walls.
In a dangerous country there can be no comparison between the hazard of a
tent and that of a bivouac. In the former a man's sleep is heavy; he
cannot hear nearly so well; he can see nothing; his cattle may all
decamp; while marauders know exactly where he is lying, and may make
their plans accordingly. They may creep up unobserved and spear him
through the canvas. The first Napoleon had a great opinion of the
advantages of bivouacking over those of tenting. He said it was the
healthier of the two for soldiers. (See p. 153.)
Shelter from the Wind.--Study the form of a hare! In the flattest and
most unpromising of fields, the creature will have availed herself of
some little hollow to the lee of an insignificant tuft of grass, and
there she will have nestled and fidgeted about till she has made a
smooth, round, grassy bed, compact and fitted to her shape, where she may
curl herself snugly up, and cower down below the level of the cutting
night wind. Follow her example. A man, as he lies upon his mother earth,
is an object so small and low that a screen of eighteen inches high will
guard him securely from the strength of a storm. A common mistake of a
novice lies in selecting a tree for his camping-place, which spreads out
nobly above, but affords no other shelter from the wind than that of its
bare stem below.
[Sketch of sleeping man behind wall].
It may be, that as he walks about in search of shelter, a mass of foliage
at the level of his eye, with its broad shadow, attracts him, and as he
stands to the leeward of it it seems snug, and, therefore, without
further reflection, he orders his bed to be spread at the foot of some
tree. But as soon as he lies down on the ground the tree proves worthless
as a screen against the wind; it is a roof, but it is not a wall. The
real want in blowy weather is a dense low screen, perfectly wind-tight,
as high as the knee above the ground. Thus, if a traveller has to encamp
on a bare turf plain, he need only turn up a sod seven feet long by two
feet wide, and if he succeeds in propping it on its edge, it will form a
sufficient shield against the wind.
In heavy gales, the neighbourhood of a solitary tree is a positive
nuisance. It creates a violent eddy of wind, that leaves palpable
evidence of its existence. Thus, in corn-fields, it is a common result of
a storm to batter the corn quite flat in circles round each tree that
stands in the field, while elsewhere no injury takes place. This very
morning that I am writing these remarks, November 158, I was
forcibly struck by the appearance of Kensington Gardens, after last
night's gale, which had covered the ground with an extraordinary amount
of dead leaves. They lay in a remarkably uniform layer, of from three to
five inches in depth, except that round each and every tree the ground
was absolutely bare of leaves for a radius of about a yard. The effect
was as though circular discs had been cut out, leaving the edges of the
layer of leaves perfectly sharp and vertical. It would have been a
dangerous mistake to have slept that night at the foot of any one of
those trees.
Again, in selecting a place for bivouac, we must bear in mind that a gale
never blows in level currents, but in all kinds of curls and eddies, as
the driving of a dust-storm, or the vagaries of bits of straw caught up
by the wind, unmistakably show us. Little hillocks or undulations,
combined with the general lay of the ground, are a chief cause of these
eddies; they entirely divert the current of the wind from particular
spots. Such spots should be looked for; they are discovered by watching
the grass or the sand that lies on the ground. If the surface be quiet in
one place, while all around it is agitated by the wind, we shall not be
far wrong in selecting that place for our bed, however unprotected it may
seem in other respects. It is constantly remarked, that a very slight
mound or ridge will shelter the ground for many feet behind it; and an
old campaigner will accept such shelter gladly, notwithstanding the
apparent insignificances of its cause.
Shelter from the Sky.--The shelter of a wall is only sufficient against
wind or driving rain; we require a roof to shield us against vertical
rain, and against dew, or what is much the same thing, against the cold
of a clear blue sky on a still night. The temperature of the heavens is
known pretty accurately, by more than one method of calculation: it is
-239 degrees Fahr.; the greatest cold felt in the Arctic regions being
about -40 degrees Fahr. If the night be cloudy, each cloud is a roof to
keep off the cold; if it be clear, we are exposed to the full chill of
the blue sky, with only such alleviation as the warming and the
non-conducting powers of the atmosphere may afford. The effect is greater
than most people would credit. The uppermost layer of the earth, or
whatever may be lying exposed upon it, is called upon to part with a
great quantity of heat. If it so happen that the uppermost layer is of a
non-conducting nature, the heat abstracted from it will be poorly
resupplied by communication from the lower ones. Again, if the night be a
very calm one, there will be no supply of warmth from fresh currents of
air falling down upon it. Hence, in the treble event of a clear blue sky,
a non-conducting soil, and a perfectly still night, we are liable to have
great cold on the surface of the ground. This is shared by a thin layer
of air that immediately rests upon it; while at each successive inch in
height, the air becomes more nearly of its proper temperature. A vast
number of experiments have been made by Mr. Glaisher on this subject
('Phil. Trans.' 1847), the upshot of which is that a thermometer laid on
grass, under a blue sky on a calm night, marks on an average 8 degrees
Fahr. colder than one 4 feet above it; 1 inch above grass, 5 1/2 degrees;
1 foot, 1 degrees; 4 feet, 1/2 degrees; on gravel and sand the
differences are only about one-third as much. Sheep have a practical
knowledge of these differences. Often, in an early walk on dewy mornings,
I see all the sheep in Hyde Park bivouacked on the gravel walks of Rotten
Row. The above figures are the results of experiments made in England,
where the air is always moist, and the formation of dew, while it
testifies to the cold of the night, assists largely to moderate it. In
arid climates the chill would be far greater; such would also be the case
at high elevations. One of Mr. Glaisher's experiments showed a difference
of no less than 28 degrees between the cold on the ground and that at 8
feet high. This might often be rivalled in an elevated desert, as in that
of Mongolia. Hence the value of the protection of a roof and of a raised
sleeping-place, to a man sleeping under a blue sky in still weather,
admits of easy interpretation.
Various Methods of Bivouacking.--Unprotected.--Mr. Shaw, the traveller
in Thibet, says:--"My companion and I walked on to keep ourselves warm,
but halting at sunset, had to sit and freeze several hours before the
things came up. The best way of keeping warm on such an occasion, is to
squat down, kneeling against a bank, resting your head on the bank, and
nearly between your knees. Then tuck your overcoat in, all round you,
over head and all; and if you are lucky, and there is not too much wind,
you will make a little atmosphere of your own inside the covering, which
will be snug in comparison with the outside air. Your feet suffer
chiefly, but you learn to tie yourself into a kind of knot, bringing as
many surfaces of your body together as possible. I have passed whole
nights in this kneeling position, and slept well; whereas I should not
have got a wink had I been stretched at full length with such a scanty
covering as a great-coat."
Bushes.--I have shown that the main object before sleeping out at night
is to secure a long wind-tight wall, and that the next is to obtain a
roof. Both these objects may be attained by pleachingtwo or three small
neighbouring bushes into one; or branches may be torn off elsewhere and
interwoven between the bushes. A few leafy boughs, cut and stuck into the
ground, with their tops leaning over the bed, and secured in that
position by other boughs, wattled-in horizontally, give great protection.
Long grass, etc., should be plucked and strewn against them to make them
as wind-tight as possible.
Walls.--A pile of saddle-bags and other travelling gear may be made into
a good screen against the wind; and travellers usually arrange them with
that intention. Walls of stone may be built as a support to cloths, whose
office it is to render the walls wind-tight, and also by lapping over
their top, to form a partial roof. We have already spoken of a broad sod
of turf propped up on edge.
"The Thibetan traveller cares for no roof overhead if he can shelter
himself from the wind behind a three-foot wall. Hence the numerous little
enclosures clustered together like cells of a honeycomb at every
halting-place, with one side always raised against the prevailing wind.
(Shaw.) These walls are built round shallow pits, each with its rough
fireplace in the middle.
Cloths.--Any cloth may be made to give shelter by an arrangement like
that in the sketch.
[Sketch of cloth shelter].
The corners of the cloth should be secured by simple hitches in the rope,
and never by knots. The former are sufficient for all purposes of
security, but the latter will jam, and you may have to injure both cloth
and string to get them loose again. It is convenient to pin the sides of
the cloth with a skewer round the ropes. Any strip of wood makes a
skewer. Earth should be banked against the lowest edge of the cloth, to
keep out the wind, and to prevent its flapping. The sticks may, on an
emergency, be replaced by faggots of brushwood, by guns, or by ropes
carried down from the overhanging branches of a large tree. (For a sail
supported by oars, see "Sail Tent" p. 108.)
Fremont, the American traveller bivouacked as follows:--His rifles were
tied together near the muzzles, the butts resting on the ground widely
apart; a knife was laid on the rope that tied them together, to cut it in
case of an alarm; over this extempore framework was thrown a large
india-rubber cloth, with which he covered his packs when on the road; it
made a cover sufficiently large to receive about half of his bed, and was
a place of shelter for his instruments.
Gordon Cumming.--The following extract is from Mr. Gordon Cumming's book
on Africa: it describes the preparations of a practised traveller for a
short excursion from his wagons away into the bush. "I had at length got
into the way of making myself tolerably comfortable in the field, and
from this date I seldom went in quest of elephants without the following
impedimenta, i.e. a large blanket, which I folded and secured before my
saddle as a dragoon does his cloak, and two leather sacks, containing a
flannel shirt, warm trousers, and a woollen night-cap, spare ammunition,
washing-rod, coffee, bread, sugar, pepper and salt, dried meat, a wooden
bowl, and a tea-spoon. These sacks were carried on the shoulders of the
natives, for which service I remunerated them with beads. They also
carried my coffee-kettle, two calabashes of water, two American axes, and
two sickles, which I used every evening to cut grass for my bed, and
likewise for my horses to eat throughout the night; and my after-rider
carried extra ammunition and a spare rifle."
Importance of Comfort.--To conclude these general hints, let the
traveller, when out in trying weather, work hard at making his
sleeping-place perfectly dry and comfortable; he should not cease until
he is convinced that it will withstand the chill of the early morning,
when the heat of the yesterday's sun is exhausted, and that of the coming
sun has not begun to be felt. It is wretched beyond expression for a man
to lie shivering beneath a scanty covering and to feel the night air
become hourly more raw, while his life-blood has less power to withstand
it; and to think, self-reproachfully, how different would have been his
situation if he had simply had forethought and energy enough to cut and
draw twice the quantity of firewood, and to spend an extra half-hour in
labouring to make himself a snugger berth. The omission once made becomes
irreparable; for in the cold of a pitiless night he has hardly sufficient
stamina to rise and face the weather, and the darkness makes him unable
to cope with his difficulties.
Bivouac in Special Localities.--Encampment in Forests.--A clump of trees
yields wonderful shelter. The Swedes have a proverb that "the forest is
the poor man's jacket." In fir-woods there is great facility in making
warm encampments; for a young tree, when it is felled, yields both poles
to support branches for shields against weather, and finer cuttings for
flooring above the snow or damp. A common plan is to support a cross-bar
by two uprights, as shown in the figure; against this cross-bar a number
of poles are made to lean; on the back of the poles abundance of fir
branches are laid horizontally; and lastly, on the back of these are
another set of leaning poles, in order to secure them by their weight.
[Sketch of pole shelter].
On Bare Plains.--Avoid sleeping in slight hollows during clear still
weather. The cold stratum of air, of which I spoke in the section of
"Shelter from the Sky," pours down into them, like water from the
surrounding plain, and stagnates. Spring frosts are always more severely
felt in hollows. Therefore, in a broad level plain, especially if the
night be clear and calm, look out for some slightly rising ground for an
encampment. The chilled stratum of air drains from off it, and is
replaced by warmer air. Horses and cattle, as the night sets in, always
draw up to these higher grounds, which rise like islands through the sea
of mist that covers the plain.
Walls have been built for shelter against the wind, on a bare sandy
plain, by taking empty bags, filling them with sand, and then building
them up as if they had been stones.
Buried, or in Holes.--A European can live through a bitter night, on a
perfectly dry sandy plain, without any clothes besides what he has on, if
he buries his body pretty deeply in the sand, keeping only his head above
ground. It is a usual habit of the naked natives in Australia to do so,
and not an unfrequent one of the Hottentots of South Africa. Mr. Moffat
records with grateful surprise how he passed a night, of which he had
gloomy forebodings, in real comfort, even luxury, by adopting this
method. A man may be as comfortable in a burrow as in a den. I shall
speak of underground houses under "Hutting;" and for the present will
only mention that, in arid countries, dry wells, dug by natives and
partially choked by drifted sand, are often to be met with. They are
generally found near existing watering-places, where they have been
superseded by others, better placed and deeper. Now, there are few warmer
sleeping-places than one of these dry wells; a small fire is easily kept
burning at the bottom, and the top may be partially roofed over.
In Ashes of Camp Fire.--A few chill hours may be got over, in a plain
that affords no other shelter, by nestling among the ashes of a recently
burnt-out camp fire.
Warm Carcases.--In Napoleon's retreat, after his campaign in Russia, many
a soldier saved or prolonged his life by creeping within the warm and
reeking carcase of a horse that had died by the way.
By the water-side.--A stony beach makes a fine dry encamping-place, and
has this advantage, that it makes it impossible for marauders to creep up
unheard. But the immediate neighbourhood of fresh water is objectionable,
for, besides being exposed to malaria and mosquitoes, the night air is
more cold and penetrating by its side, than at one or two hundred yards'
distance from it. (I will speak of walls of rushes and reeds, under
"Huts.")
By Rocks.--In the cruel climate of Thibet, Dr. Hooker tells us that it is
the habit to encamp close to some large rock, because a rock absorbs heat
all day, and parts with it but slowly during the night-time. It is,
therefore, a reservoir of warmth when the sun is down, and its
neighbourhood is coveted in the night-time. Owing to the same cause,
acting in the opposite direction, the shadow of a broad rock is
peculiarly cool and grateful, during the heat of the day, in a thirsty
land.
On Heather.--Mr. St. John tells us of an excellent way in which Highland
poachers, when in a party usually pass frosty nights on the moor-side.
They cut quantities of heather, and strew part of it as a bed on the
ground; then all the party lie down, side by side, excepting one man
whose place among the rest is kept vacant for him. His business is to
spread plaids upon them as they lie, and to heap up the remainder of the
heather upon the plaids. This being accomplished, the man wriggles and
works himself into the gap that has been left for him in the midst of his
comrades.
[Sketch of sleeping arrangement].
On Snow.--I shall have to describe snow-houses and snow-walls covered
with sail-cloth, under "Huts." Here I will speak of more simple
arrangements. Dr. Kane says:--"We afterwards learnt to modify and reduce
our travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its
simplicity and to our apparent privation of articles of supposed
necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by
step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our
sledging outfit, until we at last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of
simplicity--raw meat and a fur bag." Lieut. Cresswell, R.N., who, having
been detached from Captain McClure's ship in 1853, was the first officer
who ever accomplished the famous North-West passage, gave the following
graphic account of the routine of his journeying, in a speech at
Lynn:--"You must be aware that in Arctic travelling you must depend
entirely on your own resources. You have not a single thing else to
depend on except snow-water: no produce of the country, nor firewood, or
coals, or anything off the sort; and whatever you have to take, to
sustain you for the journey, you must carry or drag. It is found by
experience more easy to drag it on sledges than to carry it. The plan we
adopt is this:--we have a sledge generally manned by about six or ten
men, which we load with provisions, with tents, and all requisites for
travelling, simple cooking utensils, spirits-of-wine for cooking, etc.,
and start off. The quantity of people can generally drag over the ice is
forty days' provisions; that gives about 200 lbs. weight to each. After
starting from the ship, and having travelled a certain number of
hours--generally ten or eleven--we encamp for the night, or rather for
the day, because it is considered better to travel at night and sleep at
day, on account of the glare of the sun on the snow. We used to travel
journeys of about ten hours, and then encamp, light our spirits-of-wine,
put our kettle on it to thaw our snow-water, and after we had had our
supper--just a piece of pemmican and a glass of water--we were glad to
smoke our pipes and turn into bed. The first thing we did, after pitching
the tent, was to lay a sort of macintosh covering over the snow; on this
a piece of buffalo robe was stretched. Each man and officer had a blanket
sewn up in the form of a bag; and into these we used to jump, much in the
same way as you may see a boy do in a sack. We lay down head and feet,
the next person to me having his head to my feet, and his feet to my
head, so that we lay like herrings in a barrel. After this, we covered
ourselves with skin, spreading them over the whole of us; and the closer
we got, the better, as there was more warmth. We lay till the morning,
and then the process was the same again." It appears that people may bury
themselves in snow, and want neither air nor warmth. I have never made
the experiment; but have read of numerous instances of people falling
into snow-drifts, and not being extricated for many days, and when at
length they were taken out, they never seem to have complained of cold,
or any other sufferings than those of hunger and of anxiety.