The Round Table has interested me greatly. Therefore I venture to offer the suggestions which follow:

When camping on beach or in the mountains, on prairie or in forest, it is a good plan to have in the outfit a number of iron pins or stakes about half an inch thick and twelve or fifteen inches in length. Three of these should be driven into the ground deep enough to ensure their staying upright, and so near together that pot, kettle, or pan, and perhaps the coffee-pot, will stand safely on the ends of the pins when the coals are glowing or the sticks are blazing beneath. It will be found that this simple kitchen range is for several reasons better than any pole on forked stakes can be, and is incomparably better than a camp-fire without some device for ensuring the uprightness of pot or pan.

Many campers make their camp-fires by laying the sticks with the middle on the coals or the blaze. The better way is to put the ends to the fire. The fire can be managed much more easily in that way, by withdrawing a few sticks if the heat is too great, or by pushing a stick or more in between the pins and under the cooking-vessel if the heat is not enough. Camp-fires are often made too big for the needs and for the comfort of the campers.

I have seen a camp-fire made on the surface of a broad lake, and far from the nearest land, yet not in the canoe. If there had been a couple of shovelfuls of sand or earth, the fire might have been made in the canoe. As it was, the Indian gathered a few armfuls of green sedges and grasses and threw them on the water, then made the fire on the top of the heap, and soon had roast duck for dinner.

An axe is a clumsy and a dangerous tool in canoe and in camp. It is awkward in shape, and heavy. It can be used for many purposes, but the machete can be used for all the purposes for which an axe is used, except for heavy pounding, and is admirably adapted for many other uses. Millions of people from Texas to Patagonia have long found the machete an ever-ready tool.

Machetes are of many shapes and sizes. The laborer who clears trees and bush from land uses a broad and heavy blade. It is some eighteen or twenty inches in length, and may be three inches wide at its widest. The traveller will carry a machete which is like a heavy sword, and may be straight like a rapier, or curved somewhat, like a cavalry sword. This blade may be two feet or even twenty-six inches in length. For camp uses I should choose one like those the laborers use. A leathern sheath with belt go with some classes of machetes. With one of these an effective blow can be struck for cutting brush, trees of moderate size, or the flesh and bones of game. It will be useful in skinning animals or in cleaning fish. In short, there is scarcely any cutting about a camp which cannot be done far better with a machete than with the best of axes, and the price is the same as that of an axe.

I have found no better bed than is made by having a wide hem turned along the edges of very wide canvas. Through these hems run slender poles, that may be used during the day in pushing a canoe over shallow waters. The ends of the poles may rest in notches in two logs, to hold them apart, or in crotched stakes driven into the ground, and stayed apart by sticks lashed to them. When not in service as a bed this cot may be used as a tarpaulin to cover the baggage in the canoe.