The Chief Scout Talks

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1929, Page 25 (Supplement)

The Chief Scout Talks

FIRE LIGHTING. ‘(By Lt. Gen. Lord Baden-Powell.— Copyright.) As a backwoodsman you have of course to be able to cook your own food —you can’t lug your mother about with you to do it! But you can’t cook food straight off without ever- having learned how; and so I advise every scout to set to work and learn this before the next, camping season comes on. Wou can do a good deal by helping in the kitchen at home and seeing how the food is got ready. You could also get a baker to show you how to mix dough and to bake bread. But it is no use merely to be shown how it is to be done; the thing is to do it yourself. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. You will make a few mistakes at first. Your dough will come out like custard and your porridge will be burnt and your milk smoked; but after a few trials you will soon find yourself able to cook quite well.

The first thing that is necessary for cooking, even if it is only to boil a billy of tea, ie to have a fire; and a tenderfoot makes a pretty good hash of lighting a fire until he knows how. HOW NOT TO DO IT. I saw a lot of young scouts practising it the other day, and they started with piles of flimsy dry grass, paper, dry bracken, and heapa of small sticks—all

of which blazed up splendidly when they put a match to it, even to spreading among the surrounding grass—but it all went out again in a minute or two after the blaze was over, and the bigger stocks, which were to have made the cooking fire, never took light. No; you want to begin a fire in a small way by putting first some dry “kindling” or small splinters and shavings, dry grass, or a little paper — anything that will easily take fire, and over that stack a lot of small drysticks, standing on end and leaning together, or standing against a log—on the windward side of it. Remember, dry sticks are very different from sticks when it comes to lighting a fire. Dry sticks are seldom found on the ground; they are generally .best got irom a tree with a dead branch or two. Break these off, and you will have dry sticks. For “kindling” a number .of sticks partly split or splintered with your knife are useful. Do you know what punk is ? Well, punk, or tinder, is what a good many backwoodsmen carry about with them for lighting-their fires. It can be a small bit of cotton waste soaked in petrol or spirits, or very dry, baked, fungus, or bark fire, or anything that will catch fire from the smallest spark. Then, if you have no matches, you can strike a spark with a flint and steel (the back of your knife on a stone will do it) and so set light to your punk. Or you can do it with a magnifying glass if there is a good sun ehining, by making the sunlight pass through the glass on to a small amount of punk, and in a few seconds it will set it smouldering; and you must then gently blow it up into a glow, and finally into a flame, with which you can light the kindling, HOW THE INDIANS DO IT. Red Indians and other people who have neither matches nor burning glasses, set fire by rubbing wood together. The easiest way is by putting a slat of dry wood on the ground and boring a hole through it with a stick of dry wood, twirling the stick by means of a bow string. The friction of the two woods causes the kind of sawdust which comes from the hole to get red hot and if a little punk is then placed on it and blown into it it brings a flame. The American scouts at the jamboree gave a very good display of firelighting in this way. So soon as you have got your email kindling fire alight, add bigger dry sticks, upright and leaning together, until you can get a really strong fire going, when logs can be added. But for a cooking fire use plenty of sticks at first, as they make the hot ashes and embers, which are most necessary for cooking.