ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small]

Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch, whose lectures delivered before the German Court on the Babylonian origin of much of the religion of the Old Testament have called forth wide criticism, especially on the part of the German Emperor himself, is professor of Assyriology at the University of Berlin. Until recently the name Professor Delitzsch called to mind his father, Dr. Franz Delitzsch, who died in 1890, and who was distinctly a conservative in theology. The son, however, by utterances which in the German churches have been considered extremely radical, has gained a popular fame which the father never had. Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch's eminence as a scholar has been derived from his explorations in the territory which once was occupied by the great Babylonian Empire. There he has made notable discoveries, corresponding to those made by Professor Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania. As the result of his archæological discoveries concerning the life of these ancient Babylonians, Dr. Delitzsch has formulated, concerning the Babylonian origin of religious conceptions of the Old Testament, conclusions which he regards as subversive of belief in revealed religion as commonly held. These conclusions regarding Biblical criticism are not, however, those of an expert; and they have been controverted by Biblical critics of the radical school. Unlike his theological opinions, his archæological discoveries have been of great value. By bringing to light records of the common life and of the political institutions of the ancient Babylonians, they have made the life of that ancient people seem very human to us, not to say almost modern. Dr. Delitzsch uses the English language fluently. American students in Germany have found him especially approachable. His interests are broad. He is far from being a recluse; he is rather, as one of his American pupils has said, a citizen of the world.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed]

BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Author of "The Blazed Trail," "Conjuror's House," etc.

WITH PICTURES BY THOMAS FOGARTY

Chapter IV.-On Making Camp

"Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight? Who hath
heard the birch log burning?

Who is quick to read the noises of the night?
Let him follow with the others, for the young men's feet

are turning

To the camps of proved desire and known delight."

I

N the Ojibway language wigwam means a good spot for camping, a place cleared for a camp, a camp as an abstract proposition, and a camp in the concrete as represented by a tent, a thatched shelter, or a conical teepee. In like manner, the English word camp lends itself to a variety of concepts. I once slept in a four-poster bed over a polished floor in an elaborate servant-haunted structure which, mainly because it was built of logs and overlooked a lake, the owner always spoke of as his camp. Again, I once slept on a bed of prairie grass, before a fire of dried buffalo chips and mesquite, wrapped in a single light blanket, while a good vigorous rain-storm made new cold places on me and under me all night. In the morning the cowboy with whom I was traveling remarked that this was "sure a lonesome proposition as a camp."

Between these two extremes is infinite variety, grading upwards through the divers bivouacs of snow, plains, pines, or hills, to the bark shelter; past the dogtent, the A-tent, the wall-tent, to the elaborate permanent canvas cottage of the luxurious camper, the dug-out winter retreat of the range cowboy, the trapper's cabin, the great log-built lumber-jack communities, and the last refinements of sybaritic summer homes in the Adirondacks. All these are camps. And when you talk of making camp you must know whether that process is to mean only a search for rattlesnakes and enough acridCopyright, 1903, by the Outlook Company.

an

smoked fuel to boil tea, or a winter's consultation with expert architect; whether your camp is to be made on the principle of Omar's one-night Sultan, or whether it is intended to accommodate the full days of an entire summer.

But to those who tread the Long Trail the making of camp resolves itself into an algebraical formula. After a man has traveled all day through the northern wilderness he wants to rest, and anything that stands between himself and his repose he must dispose of with as few notions as is consistent with reasonable thoroughness. The end in view is a hot meal and a comfortable dry place to sleep. The straighter he can draw the line to those two points the happier he is.

Early in his woods experience Dick became possessed with the desire to do everything for himself. As this was a laudable striving for self-sufficiency, I called a halt at about three o'clock one afternoon in order to give him plenty of time.

Now Dick is a good, active, able-bodied boy, possessed of average intelligence and rather more than average zeal. He even had theory of a sort, for he had read various "Boy Campers, or the Trapper's Guide," "How to Camp Out," "The Science of Woodcraft," and other able works. He certainly had ideas enough, and confidence enough. I sat down on a log.

At the end of three hours' flusteration, heat, worry, and good hard work, he had accomplished the following results. A tent, very saggy, very askew, covered a four-sided area-it was not a rectangleof very bumpy ground. A hodge-podge bonfire, in the center of which an inaccessible coffee-pot toppled menacingly, alter

nately threatened to ignite the entire surrounding forest or to go out altogether through lack of fuel. Personal belong ings strewed the ground near the fire, and provisions cumbered the entrance to the tent. Dick was anxiously mixing batter for the cakes, attempting to stir a pot of rice often enough to prevent it from burning, and trying to rustle sufficient dry wood to keep the fire going. This diver sity of interests certainly made him sit up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain proportion of which found their way into the coffee, the rice, and the sticky batter, while the smaller articles of personal belonging, hastily dumped from the duffel-bag, gradually disappeared from view in the manner of Pompeii and ancient Vesuvius. Dick burned his fingers and stumbled about and swore, and looked so comically-pathetically red-faced through the smoke that I, seated on the log, at the same time laughed and pitied. And at the last, when he needed a continuous steady fire to fry his cakes, he suddenly discovered that dry twigs do not make coals, and that his previous operations. had used up all the fuel within easy circle of the camp.

So he had to drop everything for the purpose of rustling wood, while the coffee chilled, the rice cooled, the bacon congealed, and all the provisions, cooked and uncooked, gathered entomological specimens. At the last, the poor bedeviled theorist made a hasty meal of scorched food, brazenly postponed the washing of dishes until the morrow, and coiled about his hummocky couch to dream the nightmares of complete exhaustion.

Poor Dick! I knew exactly how he felt, how the low afternoon sun scorched, how the fire darted out at unexpected places, how the smoke followed him around no matter on which side of the fire he placed himself, how the flies all took to biting when both hands were occupied and how they all miraculously disappeared when he had set down the frying-pan and knife to fight them. I could sympathize, too,

with the lonely, forlorn, lost-dog feeling that clutched him after it was all over. I could remember how big and forbidding and unfriendly the forest had once looked to me in like circumstances, so that I had felt suddenly thrust outside into empty spaces. Almost was I tempted to intervene; but I liked Dick, and I wanted to do him good. This experience was harrowing, but it prepared his mind for the seeds of wisdom. By the following morning he had chastened his spirit, forgotten the assurance breathed from the windy pages of the Boy Trapper library, and was ready to learn.

Have you ever watched a competent portraitist at work? The infinite pains a skilled man spends on the preliminaries before he takes one step towards a likeness nearly always wears down the patience of the sitter. He measures with his eye, he plumbs, he sketches tentatively, he places in here a dab, there a blotch, he puts behind him apparently unproductive hours and then all at once he is ready to begin something that will not have to be done over again. An amateur, however, is carried away by his desire for results. He dashes in a hit-or-miss early effect, which grows into an approximate likeness almost immediately, but which will require infinite labor, alteration, and anxiety to beat into finished shape.

The case of the artist in making camps is exactly similar, and the philosophical reasons for his failure are exactly the same. To the superficial mind a camp is a shelter, a bright fire, and a smell of cooking. So when a man is very tired he cuts across lots to those three results. He pitches his tent, lights his fire, puts over his food-and finds himself drowned in detail, like my friend Dick.

The following is, in brief, what during the next six weeks I told that youth, by precept, by homily, and by making the solution so obvious that he could work it out for himself.

When five or six o'clock draws near, begin to look about you for a good level dry place, elevated some few feet above the surroundings. Drop your pack or beach your canoe. Examine the location carefully. You will want two trees about ten feet apart, from which to suspend your tent, and a bit of flat ground underneath them. Of course the flat ground

[graphic][subsumed][merged small]
« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »