THE OUT-OF-DOOR SCOUT
Busy as the Girl Scout may be with learning to do in a clever,
up-to-date way all the things to improve her home and town that the old
pioneer girls knew how to do, she never forgets that the original Scouts
were out-of-door people. So long as there are bandages to make or babies
to bathe or meals to get or clothes to make, she does them all, quickly
and cheerfully, and is very rightly proud of the badges she gets for
having learned to do them all, and the sense of independence that comes
from all this skill with her hands. It gives her a real glow of pleasure
to feel that because of her First Aid practice she may be able to save a
life some day, and that the hours of study she put in at her home
nursing and invalid cooking may make her a valuable asset to the
community in case of any great disaster or epidemic; but the real fun of
scouting lies in the great life of out-of-doors, and the call of the
woods is answered quicker by the Scout than by anybody, because the
Scout learns just how to get the most out of all this wild, free life
and how to enjoy it with the least trouble and the most fun.
One of our most experienced and best loved Captains says that "a camp is
as much a necessity for the Girl Scouts as an office headquarters," and
more and more girls are learning to agree with her every year.
Our British cousins are the greatest lovers of out-of-door life in the
world, and it is only natural that we should look to our Chief Scout to
hear what he has to say to his Girl Guides on this subject so dear to
his heart that he founded Scouting, that all boys and girls might share
his enthusiastic pleasure in going back to Nature to study and to love
her and to gain happiness and health from her woods and fields.
HOW CAMPING TEACHES THE GUIDE LAW
Last year a man went out into the woods in America
to try and see if he could live like the
prehistoric men used to do; that is to say, he
took nothing with him in the way of food or
equipment or even clothing--he went just as he
was, and started out to make his own living as
best he could. Of course the first thing he had to
do was to make some sort of tool or weapon by
which he could kill some animals, cut his wood and
make his fire and so on. So he made a stone axe,
and with that was able to cut out branches of
trees so that he could make a trap in which he
eventually caught a bear and killed it. He then
cut up the bear and used the skin for blankets and
the flesh for food. He also cut sticks and made a
little instrument by which he was able to ignite
bits of wood and so start his fire. He also
searched out various roots and berries and leaves,
which he was able to cook and make into good food,
and he even went so far as to make charcoal and to
cut slips of bark from the trees and draw pictures
of the scenery and animals around him. In this way
he lived for over a month in the wild, and came
out in the end very much better in health and
spirits and with a great experience of life. For
he had learned to shift entirely for himself and
to be independent of the different things we get
in civilization to keep us going in comfort.
That is why we go into camp a good deal in the Boy
Scout and in the Girl Guide movement, because in
camp life we learn to do without so many things
which while we are in houses we think are
necessary, and find that we can do for ourselves
many things where we used to think ourselves
helpless. And before going into camp it is just as
well to learn some of the things that will be most
useful to you when you get there. And that is what
we teach in the Headquarters of the Girl Guide
Companies before they go out and take the field.
For instance, you must know how to light your own
fire; how to collect dry enough wood to make it
burn; because you will not find gas stoves out in
the wild. Then you have to learn how to find your
own water, and good water that will not make you
ill. You have not a whole cooking range or a
kitchen full of cooking pots, and so you have to
learn to cook your food in the simplest way with
the means at your hand, such as a simple cooking
pot or a roasting stick or an oven made with your
own hands out of an old tin box or something of
that kind.
NATURE STUDY
It is only while in camp that one can really learn
to study Nature in the proper way and not as you
merely do it inside the school; because here you
are face to face with Nature at all hours of the
day and night. For the first time you live under
the stars and can watch them by the hour and see
what they really look like, and realize what an
enormous expanse of almost endless space they
cover. You know from your lessons at school that
our sun warms and lights up a large number of
different worlds like ours, all circling round it
in the Heavens. And when you hold up a shilling at
arm's length and look at the sky, the shilling
covers no less than two hundred of those suns,
each with their different little worlds circling
around them. And you then begin to realize what an
enormous endless space the Heavens comprise. You
realize perhaps for the first time the enormous
work of God.
Then also in camp you are living among plants of
every kind, and you can study them in their
natural state, how they grow and what they look
like, instead of merely seeing pictures of them in
books or dried specimens of them in collections.
All round you, too, are the birds and animals and
insects, and the more you know of them the more
you begin to like them and to take an interest in
them; and once you take an interest in them you do
not want to hurt them in any way. You would not
rob a bird's nest; you would not bully an animal;
you would not kill an insect--once you have
realized what its life and habits are. In this
way, therefore, you fulfill the Guide Law of
becoming a friend to animals.
By living in camp you begin to find that though
there are many discomforts and difficulties to be
got over, they can be got over with a little
trouble and especially if you smile at them and
tackle them.
Then living among other comrades in camp you have
to be helpful and do good turns at almost every
minute, and you have to exercise a great deal of
give and take and good temper, otherwise the camp
would become unbearable.
So you carry out the different laws of
courteousness, of helpfulness, and friendliness to
others that come in the Guide Law. Also you pick
up the idea of how necessary it is to keep
everything in its place, and to keep your kit and
tent and ground as clean as possible; otherwise
you get into a horrible state of dirt, and dirt
brings flies and other inconveniences.
You save every particle of food and in this way
you learn not only cleanliness, but thrift and
economy. And you very soon realize how cheaply you
can live in camp, and how very much enjoyment you
can get for very little money. And as you live in
the fresh, pure air of God you find that your own
thoughts are clean and pure as the air around you.
There is hardly one of the Guide Laws that is not
better carried out after you have been living and
practising it in camp.
_Habits of Animals._--If you live in the country
it is of course quite easy to observe and watch
the habits of all sorts of animals great and
small. But if you are in a town there are many
difficulties to be met with. But at the same time
if you can keep pets of any kind, rabbits, rats,
mice, dogs or ponies you can observe and watch
their habits and learn to understand them well;
but generally for Guides it is more easy to watch
birds, because you see them both in town and
country; and especially when you go into camp or
on walking tours you can observe and watch their
habits, especially in the springtime.
Then it is that you see the old birds making their
nests, hatching out their eggs and bringing up
their young; and that is of course the most
interesting time for watching them. A good
observant guide will get to know the different
kinds of birds by their cry, by their appearance,
and by their way of flying. She will also get to
know where their nests are to be found, what sort
of nests they are, what are the colors of the eggs
and so on. And also how the young appear. Some of
them come out fluffy, others covered with
feathers, others with very little on at all. The
young pigeon, for instance, has no feathers at
all, whereas a young moorhen can swim about as
soon as it comes out of the egg; while chickens
run about and hunt flies within a few minutes; and
yet a sparrow is quite useless for some days and
is blind, and has to be fed and coddled by his
parents.
Then it is an interesting sight to see the old
birds training their young ones to fly, by getting
up above them and flapping their wings a few times
until all the young ones imitate them. Then they
hop from one twig to another, still flapping their
wings, and the young ones follow suit and begin to
find that their wings help them to balance; and
finally they jump from one branch to another for
some distance so that the wings support them in
their effort. The young ones very soon find that
they are able to use their wings for flying, but
it is all done by degrees and by careful
instruction.
Then a large number of our birds do not live all
the year round in England, but they go off to
Southern climes such as Africa when the winter
comes on; but they generally turn up here at the
end of March and make their nest during the
spring. Nightingales arrive early in April;
wagtails, turtle doves, and cuckoos come late in
April; woodcock come in the autumn, and redpoles
and fieldfares also come here for the winter. In
September you will see the migrating birds
collecting to go away, the starlings in their
crowds and the swallows for the South, and so do
the warblers, the flycatchers, and the swifts. And
yet about the same time the larks are arriving
here from the Eastward, so there is a good deal of
traveling among the birds in the air at all times
of the year.
How many of our American Scouts are able to supply from their
observation all of our native birds to take the places of these
mentioned in this lovely paragraph? Everyone should be able to.
_Nature in the City._--This noticing of small
things, especially in animal life, not only gives
you great interest, but it also gives you great
fun and enjoyment in life. Even if you live in a
city you can do a certain amount of observation
of birds and animals. You would think there is not
much fun to be got out of it in a murky town like
London or Sheffield, and yet if you begin to
notice and know all about the sparrows you begin
to find there is a great deal of character and
amusement to be got out of them, by watching their
ways and habits, their nesting, and their way of
teaching their young ones to fly.
OBSERVATION.
"_Stalking._--A Guide has to be sharp at seeing
things if she is going to be any good as a Guide.
She has to notice every little track and every
little sign, and it is this studying of tracks and
following them out and finding out their meaning
which we include under the name of stalking. For
instance, if you want to find a bird's-nest you
have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird
flying into a bush and guess where its nest is,
and follow it up and find the nest. With some
birds it is a most difficult thing to find their
nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the
snipe. But those who know the birds, especially
the snipe, will recognize their call. The snipe
when she is alarmed gives quite a different call
from when she is happy and flying about. She has a
particular call when she has young ones about. So
that those who have watched and listened and know
her call when they hear it know pretty well where
the young ones are or where the nest is and so on.
"_How to Hide Yourself._--When you want to observe
wild animals you have to stalk them, that is,
creep up to them without their seeing or smelling
you.
"A hunter when he is stalking wild animals keeps
himself entirely hidden, so does the war scout
when watching or looking for the enemy; a
policemen does not catch pickpockets by standing
about in uniform watching for them; he dresses
like one of the crowd, and as often as not gazes
into a shop window and sees all that goes on
behind him reflected as if in a looking-glass.
"If a guilty person finds himself being watched,
it puts him on his guard, while an innocent person
becomes annoyed. So, when you are observing
people, don't do so by openly staring at them, but
notice the details you want to at one glance or
two, and if you want to study them more, walk
behind them; you can learn just as much from a
back view, in fact more than you can from a front
view, and, unless they are scouts and look around
frequently, they do not know that you are
observing them.
"War scouts and hunters stalking game always carry
out two important things when they don't want to
be seen."
One is _Background_.--They _take care that the
ground behind them, or trees, or buildings, etc.,
are of the same colour as their clothes_.
And the other is "_Freezing_".--If an enemy or a
deer is seen looking for them, _they remain
perfectly still without moving so long as he is
there_.
_Tracking._--The native hunters in most wild
countries follow their game by watching for tracks
on the ground, and they become so expert at seeing
the slightest sign of a footmark on the ground
that they can follow up their prey when an
ordinary civilized man can see no sign whatever.
But the great reason for looking for signs and
tracks is that from these you can read a meaning.
It is exactly like reading a book. You will see
the different letters, each letter combining to
make a word, and the words then make sense; and
there are also commas and full-stops and colons;
all of these alter the meaning of the sense. These
are all little signs, which one who is practised
and has learnt reading, makes into sense at once,
whereas a savage who has never learned could make
no sense of it at all. And so it is with tracking.
TRACKING.
"Sign" is the word used by Guides to mean any
little details, such as footprints, broken twigs,
trampled grass, scraps of food, old matches, etc.
Some native Indian trackers were following up the
footprints of a panther that had killed and
carried off a young kid. He had crossed a wide
bare slab which, of rock, of course, gave no mark
of his soft feet. The tracker went at once to the
far side of the rock where it came to a sharp
edge; he wetted his finger, and just passed it
along the edge till he found a few kid's hairs
sticking to it. This showed him where the panther
had passed down off the rock, dragging the kid
with him. Those few hairs were what Guides call
"signs."
This tracker also found bears by noticing small
"signs." On one occasion he noticed a fresh
scratch in the bark of a tree, evidently made by a
bear's claw, and on the other he found a single
black hair sticking to the bark of a tree, which
told him that a bear had rubbed against it.
_Details in the Country._--If you are in the
country, you should notice landmarks--that is,
objects which help you to find your way to prevent
your getting lost--such as distant hills and
church towers; and nearer objects, such as
peculiar buildings, trees, gates, rocks, etc.
And remember in noticing such landmarks that you
may want to use your knowledge of them some day
for telling some one else how to find his way, so
you must notice them pretty closely so as to be
able to describe them unmistakably and in their
proper order. You must notice and remember every
by-road and foot-path.
Remembrance of these things will help you to find
your way by night or in fog when other people are
losing themselves.
HORSES' TRACKS
[Illustration: Walking.]
[Illustration: Trotting.]
[Illustration: Canter.]
[Illustration: _O.H. = Off Hind, etc._
Galloping.]
[Illustration: Lame Horse Walking: Which leg is he lame in?
_N.B.--The long feet are the hind feet._]
These are the tracks of two birds on the ground. One that lives
generally on the ground, the other in bushes and trees. Which track
belongs to which bird?
_Using your Eyes._--Let nothing be too small for
your notice--a button, a match, a hair, a cigar
ash, a feather, or a leaf might be of great
importance, even a fingerprint which is almost
invisible to the naked eye has often been the
means of detecting a crime.
With a little practice in observation you can tell
pretty accurately a man's character from his
dress.
How would you recognize that a gentleman was fond
of fishing. If you see his left cuff with little
tufts of cloth sticking up, you may be sure he
fishes. When he takes his flies off the line he
will either stick them into his cap to dry, or
hook them into his sleeve. When dry he pulls them
out, which often tears a thread or two of the
cloth.
Remember how "Sherlock Holmes" met a stranger, and
noticed that he was looking fairly well-to-do, in
new clothes with a mourning band on his sleeve,
with a soldiery bearing and a sailor's way of
walking, sunburns, with tattoo marks on his hands,
and he was carrying some children's toys in his
hands. What would you have supposed that man to
be. Well, Sherlock Holmes guessed correctly that
he had lately retired from the Royal Marines as a
sergeant, that his wife had died, and that he had
some small children at home.
PRACTICE IN OBSERVATION.--_Instructor can take the
fingermarks of each girl. Lightly rub the thumb on
blacklead or on paper that is blacked with pencil,
then press the thumb on paper and examine with
magnifying glass. Show that no two persons' prints
are alike._
IN TOWN.--_Practice your girls first in walking
down a street to notice the different kinds of
shops as they pass, and to remember them in their
proper sequence at the end._
_Then to notice and remember the names on the
shops._
_Then to notice and remember the contents of a
shop window after two minutes' gaze. Finally, to
notice the contents of several shop windows in
succession with half a minute at each. Give marks
for the fullest list._
_The Guides must also notice prominent buildings
as landmarks, and the number of turnings off the
street they are using._
IN THE COUNTRY.--_Take the patrol out for a walk
and teach the girls to notice distant prominent
features, such as hills, church steeples, and so
on; and as nearer landmarks such things as
peculiar buildings, trees, rocks, gates, by-roads
or paths, nature of fences, crops different kinds
of trees, birds, animals, tracks, people,
vehicles, etc. Also any peculiar smells of plants,
animals, manure, etc.; whether gates or doors were
open or shut, whether any smoke from chimneys,
etc._
_Send Guides out in pairs._
_It adds to the value of the practice if the
instructor makes a certain number of small marks
in the ground beforehand, or leaves buttons or
matches, etc., for the girls to notice or to pick
up and bring in as a means of making them examine
the ground close to them as well as distant
objects._
PRACTICES IN NATURAL HISTORY.--_Take out Guides to
get specimens of leaves, fruit, or blossoms of
various trees, shrubs, etc., and observe the shape
and nature of the tree both in summer and in
winter._
_Collect leaves of different trees; let Guides
make tracings of them and write the name of the
tree on each._
_In the country make Guides examine crops in all
stages of their growth, so that they know pretty
well by sight what kind of crop is coming up._
_Start gardens if possible, either a patrol garden
or individual Guides' gardens. Let them grow
flowers and vegetables for profit to pay for their
equipment, etc. Show all the wild plants which may
be made use of for food. Find yew trees; report if
any good branches to make archers' bows of._
_Encourage the keeping of live pets, whether
birds, animals, reptiles, insects. Show how to
keep illustrated diary-records of plants, insects,
birds, etc., giving dates when seen for comparison
following year and showing their peculiar
markings, etc._
_If in a town take your Guides to the Zoological
Gardens, menagerie or Natural History Museum, and
show them particular animals on which you are
prepared to lecture. Not more than half a dozen
for one visit._
_If in the country get farmers or shepherd to help
with information on the habits of farm animals,
e. g., how a cow lies down and when. How to milk,
stalk rabbits, water voles, trout, birds, etc.,
and watch their habits._