Secreting Jewels.--Before going to a rich but imperfectly civilised country, travellers sometimes buy jewels and bury them in their flesh. They make a gash, put the jewels in, and allow the flesh to grow over them as it would over a bullet. The operation is more sure to succeed if the jewels are put into a silver tube with rounded ends, for silver does not irritate. If the jewels are buried without the tube, they must have no sharp edges. The best place for burying them is in the left arm, at the spot chosen for vaccination. A traveller who was thus provided would always have a small capital to fall back upon, though robbed of everything he wore.
A Chain of gold is sometimes carried by Arabs, who sew it in dirty leather under their belt. They cut off and sell a link at a time. (Burton)
The gun-stock is a good receptacle for small valuables. Unscrew the heel-plate and bore recesses; insert what you desire, after wrapping it tightly in cloth and plugging it in; then replace the heel-plate. (Peal.)
Depositing Letters.--To direct Attention to the Place of Deposit.--When you make a cache in an inhabited land, for the use of a travelling party who are ignorant of your purpose, there is of course some difficulty in ensuring that their attention should be directed to the place, but that the natives should have no clue to it. If you have means of gashing, painting or burning characters, something of this sort (see fig.), they will explain themselves.
Savages, however, take such pains to efface any mark they may find left by white men, entertaining thoughts like those of Morgiana in the 'Arabian Nights' tale of the Forty Thieves, that it would be most imprudent to trust to a single mark. A relief party should therefore be provided with a branding-iron and moveable letters, and with paints, and they should mark the tree in many places. A couple of hours spent in doing this would leave more marks than the desultory efforts of roving savages would be likely to efface. A good sign to show that Europeans have visited a spot is a saw mark (no savages use saws): it catches the eye directly.
A system occasionally employed by Arctic expeditions, of making a cache 10 feet true north (and not magnetic north) from the cairn or mark, deserves to be generally employed, at least with modifications. Let me therefore suggest, that persons who find a cairn built of a tree marked, so as to attract notice, and who are searching blindly in all directions for further clue, should invariably dig out and examine that particular spot. The notice deposited there may consist of no more than a single sentence, to indicate some distant point as the place where the longer letter is buried. I hope it will be understood, that the precaution of always burying a notice 10 feet true north of the cairn mark is proposed as additional to and not in the place of other contrivances for giving information. There will often arise some doubt as to the exact point in the circumference of the cairn or mark whence the 10 feet measurement should be made. This is due to the irregularity of the bases of all such marks. Therefore, when searching for letters, a short trench, running to the north, will frequently have to be dug, and not a mere hole. I should propose that the short notice be punched or pricked on a thin sheet of lead, made by pouring two or three melted bullets on a flat stone, and that the plate so made and inscribed should be rolled up and pushed into a hole bored or burnt through the head of a large tent peg. The peg could be driven deeply in the ground, quite out of sight, without disturbing the surrounding earth. It might even suffice to pick up a common stone and to scratch or paint upon it what you had to say, and to leave it on the ground, with its written face downwards, at the place in question.