Caches.--It is easy enough to choose a spot, which you yourself shall
again recognise, for digging a hole, where stores of all kinds may be
buried against your return: neither is it difficult to choose one, so
that you may indicate its position to others, or else leave it to a party
who are travelling in concert, to find it out for themselves. But
excessive caution in the mode of depositing the stores is, in every case,
required, as hungry and thieving natives keep watch on all the movements
of a party; they follow their tracks and hunt over their old
camping-places, in search of anything there may be to pick up. And
hyenas, wolves, wild dogs, and all kinds of prowling animals, guided by
their sharp scent, will soon scratch up any provisions that are buried
carelessly, or in such a way as to taint the earth.
The natives in Ceylon, when they wish to make a depot of game, jerk it,
put the dry meat into the hollow of a tree, fill up the reservoir with
honey, and plaster it over with clay.
Some dried plants of M. Bourgeau, the botanist attached to Captain
Palliser's expedition to the Rocky Mountains, remained underground for
ten months without injury.
Newly disturbed Ground sinks when Wetted.--If a cache be made in dry
weather, and the ground be simply levelled over it, the first heavy rain
will cause the earth to sink, and will proclaim the hidden store to an
observant eye. Soldiers, in sacking a town, find out hastily-buried
treasures by throwing a pailful of water over any suspected spot: if the
ground sinks, it has surely been recently disturbed.
Best place for a Cache.--The best position to choose for a cache is in a
sandy or gravelly soil, on account of its dryness and the facility of
digging. Old burrows, or the gigantic but abandoned hills of white ants,
may be thought of, if the stores are enclosed in cases of painted tin:
also clefts in rocks: some things can be conveniently buried under water.
The place must be chosen under circumstances that admit of your effacing
all signs of the ground having been disturbed. A good plan is to set up
your tent and to dig a deep hole in the floor, depositing what you have
to bury wrapped in an oil-cloth, in an earthen jar, or in a wooden
vessel, according to what you are able to get. It must be secure against
the attacks of the insects of the place: avoid the use of skins, for
animals will smell and dig them out. Continue to inhabit the tent for at
least a day, well stamping and smoothing down the soil at leisure. After
this, change the position of the tent, shifting the tethering-place or
kraal of your cattle to where it stood. They will speedily efface any
marks that may be left. Travellers often make their fires over the holes
where their stores are buried; but natives are so accustomed to suspect
fireplaces, that this plan does not prove to be safe. During summer
travel, in countries pestered with gnats, a smoke fire for the horses
(that is, a fire for keeping off flies), made near the place, will
attract the horses and cause them to trample all about. This is an
excellent way of obliterating marks left about the cache.
Hiding Small Things.--It is easy to make a small cache by bending down a
young tree, tying your bundle to the top, and letting it spring up again.
A spruce-tree gives excellent shelter to anything placed in its branches.
(See also what is said on "Burying Letters," p. 303.)
Hiding Large Things.--Large things, as a wagon or boat, must either be
pushed into thick bushes or reeds and left to chance, or they may be
buried in a sand drift or in a sandy deposit by a river side. A small
reedy island is a convenient place for such caches.
Double Caches.--Some persons, when they know that their intentions are
suspected, make two caches: the one with a few things buried in it, and
concealed with little care; the other, containing those that are really
valuable, and very artfully made. Thieves are sure to discover the first,
and are likely enough to omit a further search.
To find your Store again, you should have ascertained the distance and
bearing, by compass, of the hole from some marked place--as a tree--about
which you are sure not to be mistaken; or from the centre of the place
where your fire was made, which is a mark that years will not entirely
efface. If there be anything in the ground itself to indicate the
position of the hole, you have made a clumsy cache. It is not a bad plan,
after the things are buried, and before the tent is removed, to scratch a
furrow a couple of inches deep, and three or four feet long, and picking
up any bits of stick, reeds, or straw, that may be found at hand lying
upon the ground, to place them end to end in it. These will be easy
enough to find again by making a cross furrow, and when found will lead
you straight above the depot. They would never excite suspicion, even if
a native got hold of them; for they would appear to have been dropped or
blown on the ground by chance, not seen and trampled in. Mr. Atkinson
mentions an ingenious way by which the boundaries of valuable mining
property are marked in the Ural, a modification of which might serve for
indicating caches. A trench is dug and filled with charcoal beat small,
and then covered over. The charcoal lasts for ever, and cannot be
tampered with without leaving an unmistakable mark.
Secreting Jewels.--Before going to a rich but imperfectly civilised
country, travellers sometimes buy jewels and bury them in their flesh.
They make a gash, put the jewels in, and allow the flesh to grow over
them as it would over a bullet. The operation is more sure to succeed if
the jewels are put into a silver tube with rounded ends, for silver does
not irritate. If the jewels are buried without the tube, they must have
no sharp edges. The best place for burying them is in the left arm, at
the spot chosen for vaccination. A traveller who was thus provided would
always have a small capital to fall back upon, though robbed of
everything he wore.
A Chain of gold is sometimes carried by Arabs, who sew it in dirty
leather under their belt. They cut off and sell a link at a time.
(Burton)
The gun-stock is a good receptacle for small valuables. Unscrew the
heel-plate and bore recesses; insert what you desire, after wrapping it
tightly in cloth and plugging it in; then replace the heel-plate. (Peal.)
Depositing Letters.--To direct Attention to the Place of Deposit.--When
you make a cache in an inhabited land, for the use of a travelling party
who are ignorant of your purpose, there is of course some difficulty in
ensuring that their attention should be directed to the place, but that
the natives should have no clue to it. If you have means of gashing,
painting or burning characters, something of this sort (see fig.), they
will explain themselves.
[Sketch of direction plate].
Savages, however, take such pains to efface any mark they may find left
by white men, entertaining thoughts like those of Morgiana in the
'Arabian Nights' tale of the Forty Thieves, that it would be most
imprudent to trust to a single mark. A relief party should therefore be
provided with a branding-iron and moveable letters, and with paints, and
they should mark the tree in many places. A couple of hours spent in
doing this would leave more marks than the desultory efforts of roving
savages would be likely to efface. A good sign to show that Europeans
have visited a spot is a saw mark (no savages use saws): it catches the
eye directly.
A system occasionally employed by Arctic expeditions, of making a cache
10 feet true north (and not magnetic north) from the cairn or mark,
deserves to be generally employed, at least with modifications. Let me
therefore suggest, that persons who find a cairn built of a tree marked,
so as to attract notice, and who are searching blindly in all directions
for further clue, should invariably dig out and examine that particular
spot. The notice deposited there may consist of no more than a single
sentence, to indicate some distant point as the place where the longer
letter is buried. I hope it will be understood, that the precaution of
always burying a notice 10 feet true north of the cairn mark is proposed
as additional to and not in the place of other contrivances for giving
information. There will often arise some doubt as to the exact point in
the circumference of the cairn or mark whence the 10 feet measurement
should be made. This is due to the irregularity of the bases of all such
marks. Therefore, when searching for letters, a short trench, running to
the north, will frequently have to be dug, and not a mere hole. I should
propose that the short notice be punched or pricked on a thin sheet of
lead, made by pouring two or three melted bullets on a flat stone, and
that the plate so made and inscribed should be rolled up and pushed into
a hole bored or burnt through the head of a large tent peg. The peg could
be driven deeply in the ground, quite out of sight, without disturbing
the surrounding earth. It might even suffice to pick up a common stone
and to scratch or paint upon it what you had to say, and to leave it on
the ground, with its written face downwards, at the place in question.
To secure Buried Letters from Damp.--They may be wrapped in waxed cloth
or paper, if there be no fear of the ravages of insects. Lead plate is
far more safe: it can be made easily enough by a traveller out of his
bullets. (See "Lead.") A glass bottle (with something that insects cannot
eat, such as lead-plate, sealing-wax or clay, put carefully over the
cork) or an earthen jar may be used. The quill of a large feather will
hold a long letter, if it is written in very small handwriting and on
thin paper, and it will preserve it from the wet. After the letter has
been rolled up and inserted in the quill, the open end of the latter may
be squeezed flat between two stones, heated sufficiently to soften the
quill (see "Horn") but not so hot as to burn it, and then, for greater
security against wet, the end of the quill should be twisted tight. Wax
affords another easy means of closing the quill.
Picture-writing.--A very many excellent bushrangers are unable to read,
rude picture-writing is often used by them, especialy in America. The
figure of a man with a spear or bow, drawn as a child would draw, stands
for a savage; one with a hat or gun for a European; horses, oxen, and
sheep are equally to be drawn; lines represent numbers, and arrow-heads
direction. Even without more conventional symbols, a vast deal may be
expressed by rude picture-writing.
Reconnoitring Barren Countries by help of Porters and Caches.--The
distance to which an explorer can attain in barren countries depends on
the number of days' provisions that he can carry with him. Half of his
load supports him on his way out, the other half on his way home. But if
he start in company with a laden porter, he may reserve his own store and
supply both himself and the porter from the pack carried by the latter.
When half of this is consumed, the other half may be divided into two
equal portions. The one is retained by the porter who makes his way back
to camp, consuming it as he goes, and the other is cached (see "Caches")
for the sustenance of the traveller on his return journey. This being
arranged, the traveller can start from the cache with his own load of
provisions untouched, just as he would have started from the camp if he
had had no porter to assist him. It is evident a process of this
description might be frequently repeated; that a large party of porters
might start, and by a system of successive subdivisions, they could
enable the traveller to reach a position many days' journey distant from
his camp, with his own load of provisions and with other food placed in a
succession of caches, for the supply of his wants all the way home again.
The principle by which this may be effected without waste, is to send
back at each successive step the smallest detachment competent to travel
alone, and to do this as soon as one half of their load of food has been
consumed by the whole party. Then, the other half is to be divided into
two portions; one consisting of rations to supply the detachment back to
the previous cache, whence their journey home has been provided for, the
other portion to be buried, to supply rations for the remainder of the
party, when they shall have returned (either all together or else in
separate and successive detachments) back to the previous cache, whence
their journey home has also been provided for. An inspection of the Table
which I annex (p. 307) makes details unnecessary. The dotted lines show
how the porters who first return may be dispatched afresh as relief
parties. I give, in the table, a schedule of the three most important
cases. In these the regular supply of two meals per diem, and a morning
and an afternoon journey, are supposed. I wrote a paper on this subject,
which is published in the 'Royal Geographical Society's Proceedings,'
vol. ii., to which I refer those who care to inquire further into the
matter. Cases where each man or horse carries a number of rations
intermediate to those specified in the Table, are, perhaps, too
complicated for use without much previous practice. It would be easy for
a leader to satisfy himself that he was making no mistake, and to drill
his men to any one of the tabulated cases, by painting a row of sticks,
50 yards apart, to represent the successive halting-places of his
intended journey, and by making his men go through a sham rehearsal of
what they would severally have to do. Then each man's duties could be
written down in a schedule and all possibility of mistake be avoided.
The Table represents the proceedings of four men (or horses and men), who
leave camp. Two turn back at P1, one more turns back at P2, and the
remaining man pushes on to P3. Food has been cached for him both at P2
and P1; but to make matters doubly sure, a relief party, as shown by the
dotted line, can be sent to meet him at P2.
In Case A, each man carries 1 1/2 day's rations.
" B. " (or horse) " 3 1/2 days' rations for
himself (and drivers).
" C. each man (or horse) carries 5 1/2 days' rations for
himself (and drivers).
We will take the case C as an example. The figures that refer to it are
in the lines adjacent to the letter C in the Table. They are those in the
uppermost line, and also those in the line up the left-hand side of the
diagram, and they stand for days' journey and for days respectively. P1
is reached after 1 1/2 day's travel, P2 after 3 days, P3 after 6 days
from camp. The entire party might consist of 5 men, 2 carts (one a very
light one), and four horses, together with one saddle and bridle. The
heavier cart and 2 men and 2 horses would turn back at P1. One of the two
horses of the second cart would be saddled and ridden back by a third man
from P2; and, finally, the remaining cart, single horse, and 2 men, would
turn back, after 6 days, from P3.--The relief party would
originallyconsist of the first cart and 3 horses. On arriving at P1, a
horse and man would be sent back. At P2 it would have more than enough
spare rations to admit of its waiting two whole days for the exploring
cart, if it were necessary to do so.
[Full page diagram as described above].
It will be seen from the Table that as 6 days' journey is the limit to
which C can explore, so 4 days' journey is the limit for B, and 2 days
for A. But where abundance of provision is secured at P2 by means of a
relief party, the explorers might well make an effort and travel on half
rations to a greater distance than the limits here assigned.