If it is your first experience in camping, you had better go somewhere near home.  The best place is one that can be reached by wagon.  If we have to carry our supplies on our backs or in a canoe, the amount we can take will be much less.  After you have had some experience near home you can safely try the other way.  Where you go is of comparatively little importance.  Near every large city there is some lake or river where you can find a good camping site.  Campers always have more fun if they are near some water, but if such a place is not easily found near where you live, go into the woods.  Try to get away from towns or villages.  The wilder the place is, the better.

You had better make sure of your camping ground before you go by writing a letter to the owner of the land.  It isn’t much fun after we have pitched the tent and made everything shipshape to have some angry landowner come along and order us off because we are trespassers.

In selecting a place to camp, there are several very important things to look out for.

1.  Be sure you are near a supply of drinking water.  A spring or a brook is best, but even the lake or river will do if the water is pure and clean.  The water at the bottom of a lake is always much colder and cleaner than the surface water.  When I was a boy, I used a simple device for getting cold water which some of you may like to copy.  I took an old-fashioned jug and fastened a strong string to the handle and also fastened this string to the cork of the jug as the drawing shows.  The jug was weighted so that it would sink, by means of a piece of stone tied to the handle.  We used to go out to the middle of the lake where the water was the deepest and lower the jug over the side of a boat.  When it reached bottom we would give the string a sharp tug and thus pull out the cork.  The bubbles coming to the surface showed us when the jug was full.  We then hauled it on board and had clear, cold, drinking water from a lake that on the surface was warm enough for swimming.

[Illustration:  The jug by which we obtained pure, cold water]

2.  The next important thing in selecting a camp is being near a supply of firewood.  A week in camp will consume an amazing amount of wood, especially if we have a camp fire at night to sit around and sing and tell stories before turning in.  In most sections there is plenty of dead wood that we can use for camp fires.  This does not mean a lot of twigs and brush.  There is no use trying to go camping unless some one knows how to use an axe.  In another chapter I will tell you something about the proper use of axes and hatchets.  For the present it is sufficient to say that an excellent place to practise handling an axe is on the family woodpile.  You will thus combine business and pleasure, and your efforts will be appreciated by your family, which would not be the case if, like George Washington, you began your lessons in woodcraft on the favourite cherry tree.