As this book is written for boys of all ages, it has been divided under
two general heads, The Tomahawk Camps and The Axe Camps, that is, camps
which may be built with no tool but a hatchet, and camps that will need
the aid of an axe. The smallest boys can build some of the simple
shelters and the older boys can build the more difficult ones. The
reader may, if he likes, begin with the first of the book, build his way
through it, and graduate by building the log houses in doing this he
will be closely following the history of the human race, because ever
since our arboreal ancestors with prehensile toes scampered among the
branches of the pre-glacial forests and built nest like shelters in the
trees, men have made themselves shacks for a temporary refuge. But as
one of the members of the Camp-Fire Club of America, as one of the
founders of the Boy Scouts of America, and as the founder of the Boy
Pioneers of America, it would not be proper for the author to admit for
one moment that there can be such a thing as a camp without a camp-fire,
and for that reason the tree folks and the missing link whose remains
were found in Java, and to whom the scientists gave the awe-inspiring
name of Pithecanthropus erectus, cannot be counted as campers, because
they did not know how to build a camp fire neither can we admit the
ancient maker of stone implements, called eoliths, to be one of us,
because he, too, knew not the joys of a camp-fire. But there was another
fellow, called the Neanderthal man, who lived in the ice age in Europe
and he had to be a camp-fire man or freeze as far as we know, he was the
first man to build a campfire. The cold weather made him hustle, and
hustling developed him. True, he did cook and eat his neighbours
occasionally, and even split their bones for the marrow but we will
forget that part and just remember him as the first camper in Europe.
Recently a pygmy skeleton was discovered near Los Angeles which is
claimed to be about twenty thousand years old, but we do not know
whether this man knew how to build a fire or not. We do know, however,
that the American camper was here on this continent when our Bible was
yet an unfinished manuscript and that he was building his fires,
toasting his venison, and building sheds when the red-headed Eric
settled in Greenland, when Thorwald fought with the Skraelings, and
Biarnis dragon ship made the trip down the coast of Vineland about the
dawn of the Christian era. We also know that the American camper was
here when Columbus with his comical toy ships was blundering around the
West Indies.
