When five or six o'clock draws near, begin to look about you for a good
level dry place, elevated some few feet above the surroundings. Drop
your pack or beach your canoe. Examine the location carefully. You
will want two trees about ten feet apart, from which to suspend your
tent, and a bit of flat ground underneath them. Of course the flat
ground need not be particularly unencumbered by brush or saplings, so
the combination ought not to be hard to discover. Now return to your
canoe. Do not unpack the tent.
With the little axe clear the ground thoroughly. By bending a sapling
over strongly with the left hand, clipping sharply at the strained
fibres, and then bending it as strongly the other way to repeat the axe
stroke on the other side, you will find that treelets of even two or
three inches diameter can be felled by two blows. In a very few
moments you will have accomplished a hole in the forest, and your two
supporting trees will stand sentinel at either end of a most
respectable-looking clearing. Do not unpack the tent.
Now, although the ground seems free of all but unimportant growths, go
over it thoroughly for little shrubs and leaves. They look soft and
yielding, but are often possessed of unexpectedly abrasive roots.
Besides, they mask the face of the ground. When you have finished
pulling them up by the roots, you will find that your supposedly level
plot is knobby with hummocks. Stand directly over each little mound;
swing the back of your axe vigorously against it, adze-wise, between
your legs.
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