How to Camp Out

Advice on camp gear, clothing, cooking, hiking, and other topics. Much of the book remains good and sensible advice today, but modern readers may be amused by Maj. Gould's few remarks on ladies, who "must be cared for more tenderly than men."

By : John Mead Gould (1839 - 1930)

00 - Preface 01 - Getting Ready 02 - Small Parties Travelling Afoot and Camping 03 - Large Parties Afoot with Baggage-Wagon 04 - Clothing 05 - Stoves and Cooking-Utensils 06 - Cooking 07 - Marching 08 - The Camp 09 - Tents, Tent Poles and Pins 10 - Miscellaneous.--General Advice 11 - Diary 12 - 'How to Do It' by Rev. Edward Everett Hale, etc. 13 - Hygienic Notes, by Dr. Elliott Coues, U.S.A.

In these few pages I have tried to prepare something about camping and walking, such as I should have enjoyed reading when I was a boy; and, with this thought in my mind, I some years ago began to collect the subject-matter for a book of this kind, by jotting down all questions about camping, &c., that my young friends asked me. I have also taken pains, when I have been off on a walk, or have been camping, to notice the parties of campers and trampers that I have chanced to meet, and have made a note of their failures or success. The experiences of the pleasant days when, in my teens, I climbed the mountains of Oxford County, or sailed through Casco Bay, have added largely to the stock of notes; and finally the diaries of "the war," and the recollections of "the field," have contributed generously; so that, with quotations, and some help from other sources, a sizable volume is ready.

Although it is prepared for young men,—for students more especially,—it contains much, I trust, that will prove valuable to campers-out in general.

I am under obligations to Dr. Elliott Coues, of the United States Army, for the valuable advice contained in Chapter XIII.; and I esteem it a piece of good fortune that his excellent work ("Field Ornithology") should have been published before this effort of mine, for I hardly know where else I could have found the information with authority so unquestionable.

Prof. Edward S. Morse has increased the debt of gratitude I already owe him, by taking his precious time to draw my illustrations, and prepare them for the engraver.

Mr. J. Edward Fickett of Portland, a sailmaker, and formerly of the navy, has assisted in the chapter upon tents; and there are numbers of my young friends who will recognize the results of their experience, as they read these pages, and will please to receive my thanks for making them known to me.