Feathers.—­When you collect bed feathers for coverlets, recollect that if they are cleanly plucked, they will require no dressing of any kind, save drying and beating.

Brown Paper.—­Brown paper is an excellent non-conductor of heat and excluder of draughts:  English cottagers often enclose sheets of it within their quilted counterpanes.  If thoroughly soaked and then dried, it will not crackle.

Extra Clothes.—­If a man be destitute of proper wraps, he cannot do better than put on all the spare clothes he possesses.  The additional warmth of a single extra shirt is remarkable.

Dry Clothes.—­However wet the weather may be during the day, the traveller should never relax his endeavours to keep a dry and warm change of clothes for his bivouac at night.  Hardships in rude weather matter little to a healthy man, when he is awake and moving, and while the sun is above the horizon; but let him never forget the deplorable results that may follow a single night’s exposure to cold, malaria, and damp.

Pillows.—­A mound of sand or earth, scraped together for a pillow, is ground down into flatness, after a few minutes.  A bag filled with earth, or it may be with grass, keeps its shape.  Many people use their saddles as pillows; they roll up the flaps and stirrups, and place the saddle on the ground with a stone underneath, at its hindmost end, to keep it level and steady, and then lay their heads on the seat.  I prefer using anything else; as, for instance, the stone without the saddle:  but I generally secure some bag or other for the purpose, as, without a pillow, it is difficult to sleep in comfort.  A bag shaped like a pillow-case, and stuffed with spare clothes, is very convenient.  Some people advocate air-cushions.

Mr. Mansfield Parkyns’ excellent plan, of sleeping on the side, with the stock of the gun between the head and the arm, and the barrel between the legs, will be described when I speak of “Guns.”

BIVOUAC.

There are four ways in which travellers who are thrown upon their own resources may house themselves.  They may bivouac, that is to say, they may erect a temporary shelter of a makeshift character, partly from materials found on the spot, and partly from the cloths they may happen to possess; they may build a substantial hut, which of course takes a good deal of labour to complete; they may use sleeping-bags; or they may pitch a regular tent.  I will speak of these four methods of encamping, —­the bivouac, the hut, the sleeping-bag, and the tent, in that order.