Young Knights of the Empire Part 16

6. Keep your home clean and well ventilated.

7. Never neglect a cold.

Here are some pictures showing how people get the germs of consumption into them unless they are very careful.

A large number of cows have the germs or seeds of consumption in them, and they give out these germs in their milk. So milk ought to be "sterilised," that is to say, it should be made so hot that the germs are killed before it is drunk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DO NOT DRINK MILK STRAIGHT FROM THE COW, AS A GREAT NUMBER OF THESE ANIMALS HAVE THE GERMS OF CONSUMPTION IN THEM.]

Then a large number of people have the consumption germs in them, although they may not yet be ill with it. They will get ill sooner or later, and they give out germs whenever they cough or spit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW CONSUMPTION IS SPREAD.

A man spits and the germs rise. They try a boy who breathes through the nose, but get thrown out again. Then they try another boy who breathes through his open mouth, and so they get into his lungs.]

These germs get blown about in the air with the dust, and get into other people's mouths, and so into their lungs--that is, if the other people go about with their mouths partly open. If they breathe through their nose only, as I hope all Scouts do, there is less chance of the germs getting into the lungs, as they get caught in the sticky liquid in the nostrils, and get driven out again when you blow your nose.

It is the same with other diseases besides consumption.

The Missioner Scout can safely go about among people who are ill with colds, measles, and other sicknesses, if he breathes only through his nose. All illnesses that are "catching" are spread by germs flying from one person to another.

The consumptive germs get into you and go for your lungs, which are big sponges inside you, through which your blood gets the air, which is necessary to keep it healthy. Consumption germs "consume" your lungs.

The nasty little germ of disease thrives in dirt, and dark and muggy _air_, and so he grips even the healthiest people in rooms that are dark and dirty, and where the windows are not kept open.

Fresh air, sunlight, and cleanliness kill the germs.

Now that you know what consumption is, you will be doing a good turn to get other people to understand it.

I _want_ every _Scout who reads this to show the pictures to at least five other people, AND EXPLAIN them. He may thus save lives._

TRAVELS ABROAD

CAMPING IN NORWAY

After a delightful little voyage in one of the smart Wilson Line steamers, I arrived one morning early in Christiania, the capital of Norway.

The town is an ordinary Continental town, but stands on the sh.o.r.es of an arm of the sea which is so shut in by wooded hills for some twenty miles that it is more like an inland lake than a gulf of the ocean.

What a place for Sea Scouts!

One of the first Norwegian boys to attract my attention was a Boy Scout--so like an English Scout that he may have been one for all I know, but I was not able to speak to him, I was catching a train, and he was going off in a hurry in another direction, evidently in trouble, as he was whistling and smiling! And it is difficult to tell a Norwegian boy from an English boy by his appearance, for they are very much alike.

And so are the girls and young women very like their British sisters.

But then, as we all came of the same blood in bygone times, it is not altogether surprising.

Then their Royal Family is related to ours, for Queen Maud, the wife of King Haakon, is sister of our own King.

So Norwegians have much in common with the English, and since my visit Scouts of the two countries have become good friends and camped with each other.

There could be no better country than this for camping out. As you come through it in the train, you keep pa.s.sing among wooded hills and then alongside rivers and lakes; a great deal of wild country with occasional cultivated parts where there are neat little wooden farmsteads and villages.

The houses are painted bright colours, and are roofed with tiles or s.h.i.+ngles, that is, wooden slates, as in Canada. In fact, with its forests, lakes, and rivers, and their floating timber, and the sawmills, the country generally is not unlike Canada.

As wood is so abundant here, farm Scouts will be interested to see from the picture how they make their fences in place of hedges or ordinary post-and-rails. It is a kind of fence that you can make easily with almost any kind of slats or with brushwood or branches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NORWEGIAN FENCE.]

A way which the Norwegian woodmen have of piling their small timber in the woods in order to dry it is one which might also be useful to Scouts when making a bivouac-hut, where there are plenty of saplings.

You pile them as shown in the picture, all with their b.u.t.ts or thick ends together to windward, and thin ends splayed outwards.

When you have got this frame together you can cover it with a waterproof sheet, or straw mat, or brushwood, to keep out the weather, and light your fire opposite the opening.

In my camp I had one friend, George.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EASILY-MADE BIVOUAC HUT]

We found a good site on the bank of a rus.h.i.+ng roaring river between high hills covered with forest. We were thirty-five miles from the nearest railway station, and about four miles from a farm, where we got our b.u.t.ter and our milk. The river supplied our fish, and we shot our own game.

We carried just enough kit to make a load for a pack-pony--a bundle of about 50lb. weight on each side of him. There were no roads, and a pack-pony is the only means of carrying heavy luggage, such as tents, etc.

We each had our bivouac tent, bedding, change of clothes, cooking pots, and fis.h.i.+ng rods, etc.

Of course, we did our own cooking, woodcutting, and cleaning up. And cleaning up is a very important part of camp work.

Our camp was small and never likely to be seen by anybody besides ourselves, but it was always kept very neat and tidy, and we could s.h.i.+ft camp at any moment, and leave scarcely a sign that we had been there. That is how Scouts should always have their camp--everything in its place, so that you can find anything you want at a moment's notice in the event of a sudden turn out in the dark, or for shutting up for a sudden rain squall.

All sc.r.a.ps of food should be burnt or buried, and not thrown about round the camp. On service these sc.r.a.ps would be good "sign" to an enemy's scouts as to who had occupied the camp, and how long ago, and how well off they were for provisions, and so on.

Another reason against letting your camp ground get dirty is that it quickly becomes the camping place also of thousands of flies. If you have flies in camp it is a sign that the camp is not kept clean.

A CAMP BEDROOM.

I have made a sketch of my tent, which, as you will see, is a kind of hammock with a roof to it, slung between two trees. This form of tent keeps you dry in wet weather or on swampy ground; you never have to lie on the ground, you can get snakes and other nice visitors crawling into your bed. The cot is long enough to hold your kit as well as yourself.

It is kept stretched out by two side poles and a ridge pole. These can be cut in the wood where you camp, and the cot itself, with bedding and kit inside, can be rolled up in the waterproof, and this forms a neat roll for half of the pack-pony's load.

The cot is springy and most comfortable to sleep in.

When you are ill or wounded it makes a very good stretcher, the side poles forming the carrying handles. In the same way, when you are dead it makes an excellent coffin, as the sides and ends fold in, and can be laced over the body. I have not tried it myself in that way.

Another advantage which I have twice found the cot-tent to have was, when a tornado visited camp, and all the tents were blown down into the mud, my little cot was swaying quietly in the wind--it cannot blow down.

In the drawing you see also, besides my bedroom (in the cot), my dressing-room, my drawing-room, and my bathroom--in fact, my whole residence.