It is always well to dispense with everything which can be discarded.
A camp-bed well off the ground and more strongly made than those of
the usual American pattern, is essential; a field kit canvas valise,
the Wolseley pattern, containing a pocket at either end, with a cork
mattress, is also indispensable. It will carry all personal effects.
Flannel shirts, towels, socks and the like, including a book or
two, writing materials, mackintosh sheets, mosquito curtains, and
insect-powder are all which need to be included. Fresh mint is useful
against fleas if thrown about near the sleeping things in little heaps.
It is an invaluable remedy and usually effective, though, by the way,
I found the fleas and bugs in the houses of New York and Philadelphia
infinitely less amenable to such treatment than any I came across in
Korea during my stay there. A camera, a colonial saddle, Zeiss glasses,
a shot-gun, a sporting-rifle, a revolver, a hunting-knife, and a large
vulcanite water-bottle are necessary. A supply of sparklets is to be
recommended; these articles, with a coil of rope, balls of string, jam,
cocoa, tea, sugar, alcohol, potted meats, tinned fruits, and biscuits,
enamelled ware eating and cooking things, with a few toilet accessories,
completed my materials. It is good policy to take a small hamper of wines
and luxuries, in case the opportunity occurs of extending hospitality to
an official or some other travelling European. They are very serviceable
among the officials. Native tobacco is light, mild, and easily smokable.
I carried a pouch of it invariably. Canvas valises of the service type
are better than any kind of a box. With this arrangement there are no
corners or sharp edges to hurt the horses, and as a load, too, they do
not make such hard, unyielding objects against the side of a horse as any
leather, tin, or wooden contrivance. My bed and field-kit just balanced
upon one pony; my provisions and servants’ baggage fitted another. There
was one spare pony. The interpreter and myself rode; the servants were
mounted upon the baggage animals, the coolie walked.
At one time, when I was travelling with a German friend, our retinue
was exceedingly numerous; we each had our personal establishment and a
combined staff for the expedition. This, however, is not quite the way
to rough it. It was, moreover, comparatively expensive and a bother,
inasmuch that so large a cavalcade required no little managing. There
was, however, something luxurious and enjoyable in that procession across
Korea, although it is not the plan to be adopted in general.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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