Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the RockiesSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
General
Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the Rockies
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction; Rocky Mountains -- Juvenile fiction
It was considered a serious offense for one white man to molest the
cache of another white man, unless to save his own life. And to rob a
cache of the furs was worse than stealing horses.
All caches were not alike. Some were holes, others were caves into
banks. When Scouts of to-day make a cache, they must record the location
exceedingly well and close, or they are apt to lose the spot. It seems
very easy to remember trees and rocks and all; but anybody who has laid
a rabbit down, while he chased another, and then has thought to go
straight and pick it up again--or anybody who has searched for a
golf-ball when he knew exactly where it lit--will realize that a cache
may be very tricky.
Note 51, page 152: The homeopathic preparation of aconite is highly
recommended by many woodsmen and other travelers as a good thing to have
in the trail medicine kit. A few drops will kill a fever or a cold.
Dover's Powder (in small doses, by causing perspiration and thus
checking a fever or throwing off a cold), quinine, calomel (for
biliousness and to clean out the intestines when they are clogged with
waste and mucus), Epsom salts or castor oil (to clean out the bowels
also), an emetic, like sirup of ipecac (to empty the stomach quickly in
case of emergency), some mustard for making a plaster for the chest (in
croupiness or cold inside the chest), or for mixing with warm water to
make an emetic, extract of ginger or sirup of ginger (for summer
complaint and griping looseness of the bowels if long continued),
perhaps some soda mint tablets (for sour stomach caused by overeating),
are other simple remedies. Of course the Scout should learn to read the
little clinical thermometer, and one should be carried in the trail kit.
It is much better to know exactly how to use a few simple standard
remedies, than to experiment with a lot of powerful drugs and very
likely make terrible mistakes. To give a medicine without being certain
just why and just what it will do is as bad as pointing a gun at
somebody without knowing whether or not it is loaded. Doctors study hard
for years, before they begin to practice; and Scouts cannot expect to
make doctors of themselves in a few months. Head cool, feet warm, bowels
open, moderate eating--these are United States Army rules, and Scouts'
rules too. "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure"!
Scouts who take care of their bodies properly will rarely need medicine,
and should be proud of the fact.
Note 52, page 153: In 1909, in California alone, out of 388 forest fires
243, or almost two thirds, were caused by human beings' carelessness;
and 119, or almost one third, were caused by camp-fires! The money loss
to the state was $1,000,000; but this was not all the damage. A forest,
or a single tree, is not replaced in a year, or in ten years; and the
stately evergreen trees grow slowest of all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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