Among the small conveniences, a good strong pocket-knife, a small “hard chisel,” and a file should not be forgotten.  A great deal of real work can be done with very few tools.  One of Colt’s rifles is a companion which should be specially cared for, and a water-proof cover should always be taken to protect the lock during showers.  There is one rule among hunters which ought always to be remembered, namely,—­“Look at the gun, but never let the gun look at you, or at your companions.”  Travellers are always more or less exposed to the careless handling of fire-arms, and numerous accidents occur by carrying the piece with the cock down on the nipple.  Three-fourths of all the gun accidents are owing to this cause; for a blow on the back of the cock is almost sure to explode the cap, while a gun at half-cock is comparatively safe.

Don’t carry too many eatables on your expeditions.  Dr. Kane says his party learned to modify and reduce their travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and to their apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity were their actual comfort and practical efficiency.  Step by step, as long as their Arctic service continued, they went on reducing their sledging-outfit, until they at last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity,—­raw meat and a fur bag.  Salt and pepper are needful condiments.  Nearly all the rest are out of place on a roughing expedition.  Among the most portable kinds of solid food are pemmican, jerked meat, wheat flour, barley, peas, cheese, and biscuit.  Salt meat is a disappointing dish, and apt to be sadly uncertain.  Somebody once said that water had tasted of sinners ever since the flood, and salted meat sometimes has a taint full as vivid.  Twenty-eight ounces of real nutriment per diem for a man in rough work as a traveller will be all that he requires; if he perform severe tramping, thirty ounces.

The French say, C’est la soupe qui fait le soldat, and we have always found on a tramping expedition nothing so life-restoring after fatigue and hunger as the portable soup now so easily obtained at places where prepared food is put up for travellers’ uses.  Spirituous liquors are no help in roughing it.  On the contrary, they invite sunstroke, and various other unpleasant visitors incident to the life of a traveller.  Habitual brandy-drinkers give out sooner than cold-water men, and we have seen fainting red noses by the score succumb to the weather, when boys addicted to water would crow like chanticleer through a long storm of sleet and snow on the freezing Alps.

It is not well to lose your way; but in case this unpleasant luck befall you, set systematically to work to find it.  Throw terror to the idiots who always flutter and flounder, and so go wrong inevitably.  Galton the Plucky says,—­and he has as much cool wisdom to impart as a traveller needs,—­when you make the unlively discovery that you are lost, ask yourself the three following questions:—­