A supply of pure water contributes as much to the enjoyment of the campers as to the preservation of health. Common-sense will direct that the camp be selected within easy reach of some bubbling spring or fresh, uncontaminated brook of running water, but there is another thing of paramount importance, and that is a handy supply of fuel. The latter is of even more importance than that of water. With a wooden man-yoke, water is easily transported for quite a distance, but no one who has not tried it can realize the difficulty of carrying fuel even a short distance.
The Adirondack camp is made from the materials furnished by the forest, and it is put together in the form of a shack or shelter, by the woodsmen or guides. Spruce-trees, eight or nine inches in diameter, are cut down, quickly stripped of their bark, and one of them suspended between two trees eight or ten feet from the ground, or is supported by forked sticks. Others are then laid standing up to it, and the incline is shingled with the bark, to keep out the rain. Your bed is on the ground beneath the bark roof. Put a log at the head, and a smaller one at the foot, and cover the intervening space with a thick layer of flat spruce boughs, neatly laid, with all the unnecessary sticks thrown out; chop down some young balsams and strip them of all their twigs; selecting all those of about twelve inches in length, begin at the foot of the bed and work up, sticking the butt-ends of the balsam twigs into the spruce boughs. Place them as close together as possible, with their tops slightly inclining to the foot of the couch. After all the balsam is planted scatter the fine tips of some hemlock boughs over the balsam, and spread your blanket over all. Any bag or pillow-case, filled with hemlock and balsam tips, makes a good, sweet-scented pillow. All that then remains to be done is to fill up the ends of the shack with brush, roll a back-log in front of your camp, and start the fire. At night spread your blankets on the spruce twigs, stretch yourself out and watch the dying embers of the fire until you gradually drift into the sweet slumber of the camper.
is a triangular tent, open in front, made of one piece of canvas fastened to a horizontal pole in front, to the ground in the rear, and hanging down at the sides. Over this a rude, shack-like Adirondack camp is built, not to keep out rain but to protect the canvas, with the green brush, from sparks from the camp-fire. In no case must the brush touch the cloth, for during a rain the canvas will leak wherever any object is resting against it, either from the inside or outside.