Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

228 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFTIf you carry fire-irons, as recommended in a pii»vious chapter, much bother is saved. Simply laydown two flat rocks or a pair of billets far enoughapart for the purpose, place the flat irons on them,and space them to suit the utensils.If a camp grate is used, build a crisscross firoof short sticks under it.Split wood is better than round sticks for cooking;it catches easier and burns more evenly.Camp Crane.— Pots for hot water, stews, coffee,and so on, are more manageable when hungabove the fire. The heat can easily be regulated, thepots hanging low at first to boil quickly, and thenbeing elevated or shifted aside to simmer.Set up two forked stakes about five feet apart andfour feet to the crotches. Across them lay a greenstick (lug-pole) somewhat thicker than a broomstick.Now cut three or four green crotches frombranches, drive a nail in the small end of each,or cut a notch in it, invert the crotches, and hangthem on the lug-pole to suspend kettles from. Thesepot-hooks are to be of different lengths so that thekettle can be adjusted to different heights abovethe fire, first for hard boiling, and then for simmering.If kettles were hung from the lug-pole itself,this adjustment could not be made, and j'ou wouldhave to dismount the whole business in order toget one kettle off. ** It is curious how many different names have been bC'atowed upon the hooks by which kettles are suspended overa fire. Our forefathers called them pot-hooks, trammels, hakes,hangers, pot-hangers, pot-claws, i)ot-crooks, gallows-crooks, potchips,pot-brakes, gibs or gib-crokes, rackan-crooks (a chain oipierced bar on which to hang hooks was called a rackan orreckon), and I know not what else besides. Among Mainelumbermen, such an implement is called a lug-stick, a hook forlifting kettles is a hook-stick, and a stick sharpened and driveninto the ground at an angle so as to bend over the fire, tosusi)end a kettle from, is a wambeck or a spygelia — the RedGods alone know why! The frame built over a cooking-fire iscalled by the Penobscots kdchi-plak-wagn, and the_ Micmacs callthe lug-stick a chiplok-waiigan, which the white guides have partiallyanglicized into waugan-stick. It is well to know, andheresy to disbelieve, that, after boiling the kettle, it brings badluck to leave the waugan or spygelia standing._If this catalogue does not suffice the amateur cook to expresshis ideas about such things, he may exercise his jaws with theRomany (gipsy) term for pot-hook, which is kkkauviscoe sasteK_