From water to fire is a natural transition. How to get a blaze just when
you want it puzzles the will sometimes hugely. Every traveller should
provide himself with a good handy steel, proper flint, and unfailing
tinder, because lucifers are liable to many accidents. Pliny recommended
the wood of mulberry, bay-laurel, and ivy, as good material to be rubbed
together in order to procure a fire; but Pliny is behind the times, and
must not be trusted to make rules for General McLellan's boys. Of course
no one would omit to take lucifers on a tramp; but steel, flint, and
tinder are three warm friends that in an emergency will always come up
to the strike. To find firewood is a knack, and it ought to be well
cultivated. Don't despise bits of dry moss, fine grass, and slips of
bark, if you come across them. Twenty fires are failures in the open air
for one that succeeds, unless the operator knows his business. A novice
will use matches, wood, wind, time, and violent language enough to burn
down a city, and never get any satisfaction out of all the expenditure;
while a knowing hand will, out of the stump of an old, half-rotten tree,
bring you such magnificent, permanent heat, that your heart and your
tea-kettle will sing together for joy over it.
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