Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

,72 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFTting water percolate through It for about twohours, or until the water ceases to have a yellowishtinge. One form of filter is contrived by layinga coarse, flat basket or strainer on a pile of gravelwith a drain underneath. Rather fine gravel is nowscattered thickly over the bottom and up the sidesof the strainer, and the meal laid thickly over thegravel. Water is added, little by little, to set freethe tannin. The meal is removed by hand as muchas possible, then water is poured over the remainderto get it together, and thus little is wasted. Themeal by this time has the consistency of ordinarydough.The dough Is cooked Is two ways: first, by boilingit in water as we do corn-meal mush, the resultingporridge being not unlike yellow corn-meal mushin appearance and taste ; it is sweet and wholesome,but rather Insipid. The second mode Is to makethe dough Into small balls, which are wrapped Ingreen corn leaves. These balls are then placed inhot ashes, some green leaves of corn are laid overthem, and hot ashes are placed on the top, and thecakes are thus baked.(Covllle, Contrib. to U. S. Herbarium, VII. No.3.—Palmer, In Amer, Naturalist, XII, 597. Anothermethod, used by the Porno Indians, who add 5 percent, of red earth to the dough, is described byJ. W. Hudson In the Amer. Anthropologist^ 1900,pp. 775-6-)Nuts.—Among the Cherokees, and also in Italyand In Tyrol, I have eaten bread made from chestnuts.The Cherokee method, when they have cornalso. Is to use the chestnuts whole, mixing them withenough corn-meal dough to hold them together, andthen baking cakes of this material enclosed In cornhusks, like tamales. The peasants of southernEurope make bread from the meal of chestnutsalone—the large European chestnut, of course,^ beingused. Such bread Is palatable and nutritious,but lies heavily on one's stomach until he becomesaccustomed to it.