



Produced by Emmy, MFR, Sam W. and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive). Dedicated, with much affection, to our
friend Emmy, who "fell off the planet" far too soon.









            The Boy Scouts
                  of
            Woodcraft Camp

                  By
          Thornton W. Burgess

               Author of
     The Boy Scouts on Swift River
     The Boy Scouts on Lost Trail
  The Boy Scouts in a Trapper's Camp


            [Illustration]


      Illustrated by C. S. Corson


          The Penn Publishing
         Company Philadelphia
                 1922


               COPYRIGHT
                1912 BY
               THE PENN
              PUBLISHING
                COMPANY

            [Illustration]




  [Illustration: THE CHIEF GREETED HIM PLEASANTLY]




           _To my Wife_

  _whose faith and encouragement
    have placed me in her debt
      beyond my power to pay_




Introduction


The Boy Scout movement has appealed to me from the very first as a
long step in the right direction. It stands for an organized boyhood
on a world-wide plan. It has in it the essentials for a stronger and
better manhood, based on character building and physical development.
Clear and clean thinking and self-reliance are its fundamental
principles. Its weakness has been and is the difficulty in securing
leaders, men with an understanding of and sympathy with boys, who can
give the necessary time to active work in the field with the patrols,
and who are themselves sufficiently versed in the lore of the woods
and fields.

For years, before ever the Boy Scouts were organized, I had dreamed of
a woodcraft camp for boys, a camp which in its appointments and
surroundings should make constant appeal to the imagination of
red-blooded, adventure-loving boys, and which should at the same time
be a true "school of the woods" wherein woodcraft and the ways of
nature should be taught along much the same lines as those on which
the Boy Scout movement is founded.

In this and succeeding volumes, "The Boy Scouts on Swift River," "The
Boy Scouts on Lost Trail," "The Boy Scouts in a Trapper's Camp," I
have sought to portray the life of such a school camp under Boy Scout
rules. "The Boy Scouts of Woodcraft Camp" has been written with a
twofold purpose: To stimulate on the part of every one of my boy
readers a desire to master for himself the mysteries of nature's great
out-of-doors, the secrets of field and wood and stream, and to show by
example what the Boy Scout's oath means in the development of
character. Many of the incidents in the succeeding pages are drawn
from my own experiences. And if, because of reading this story, one
more boy is led to the Shrine of the Hemlock, there to inhale the
pungent incense from a camp-fire and to master the art of tossing a
flapjack, I shall feel that I have not written in vain.

                                                 THE AUTHOR.




Contents


        I. THE TENDERFOOT                         11

       II. WOODCRAFT CAMP                         26

      III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS                      39

       IV. THE INITIATION                         56

        V. THE RECALL                             71

       VI. THE SPECTER IN CAMP                    86

      VII. FIRST LESSONS                         100

     VIII. LONESOME POND                         116

       IX. A SHOT IN THE DUSK                    136

        X. A BATTLE FOR HONOR                    161

       XI. BUXBY'S BUNCOMBE                      184

      XII. LOST                                  199

     XIII. THE HONEY SEEKERS                     220

      XIV. THE SUPREME TEST                      237

       XV. CRAFTY MIKE                           254

      XVI. THE POACHER OF LONESOME POND          273

     XVII. THE HAUNTED CABIN                     288

    XVIII. ON GUARD                              304

      XIX. FOR THE HONOR OF THE TRIBE            319

       XX. THE HOME TRAIL                        337




Illustrations


    THE CHIEF GREETED HIM PLEASANTLY          _Frontispiece_

    DIAGRAM OF WOOD