ll about three o'clock in the morning, when you dream
that you are out sleighing in your pajamas, and wake up with a shiver.

"HOLA, FERDINAND, FRANCOIS!" you call out from your bed, pulling the
blankets over your ears; "RAMANCHEZ LE FEU, S'IL VOUS PLAIT. C'EST UN
FREITE DE CHIEN."

III. THE COOKING-FIRE

Of course such a fire as I have been describing can be used for cooking,
when it has burned down a little, and there is a bed of hot embers in
front of the backlog. But a correct kitchen fire should be constructed
after another fashion. What you want now is not blaze, but heat, and
that not diffused, but concentrated. You must be able to get close to
your fire without burning your boots or scorching your face.

If you have time and the material, make a fireplace of big stones. But
not of granite, for that will split with the heat, and perhaps fly in
your face.

If you are in a hurry and there are no suitable stones at hand, lay two
good logs nearly parallel with each other, a foot or so apart, and build
your fire between them. For a cooking-fire, use split wood in short
sticks. Let the first supply burn to glowing coals before you begin.
A frying-pan that is lukewarm one minute and red-hot the next is the
abomination of desolation. If you want black toast, have it made before
a fresh, sputtering, blazing heap of wood.

In fires, as in men, an excess of energy is a lack of usefulness. The
best work is done without many sparks. Just enough is the right kind of
a fire and a feast.

To know how to cook is not a very elegant accomplishment. Yet there are
times and seasons when it seems to come in better than familiarity with
the dead languages, or much skill upon the lute.

You cannot always rely on your guides for a tasteful preparation of
food. Many of them are ignorant of the difference between frying and
broiling, and their notion of boiling a potato or a fish is to reduce it
to a pulp. Now and then you find a man who has a natural inclination to
the culinary art, and who does very well within familiar limits.

Old Edouard, the Montaignais Indian who cooked for my friends H. E. G.
and C. S. D. last summer on the STE. MARGUERITE EN BAS, was such a man.
But Edouard could not read, and the only way he could tell the nature
of the canned provisions was by the pictures on the cans. If the picture
was strange to him, there was no guessing what he would do with the
contents of the can. He was capable of roast