In the Himalaya mountains, the natives make bridges of three ropes.
Bridge Building
As I told you before, my scouts in Ashanti, when also acting as pioneers, had to build nearly two hundred bridges. And they had to make them out of any kind of material that they could find on the spot. There are many ways of making bridges. Pioneer bridges are generally made by
lashing poles together.
In India, in the Himalaya mountains, the natives make bridges out of three ropes stretched across the river and connected together every few yards by V-shaped sticks, so that one rope forms the footpath and the other two make the handrail on either side. They are a jumpy kind of bridge to walk across. But they take you over and they are easily made.
The simplest way for bridging a narrow, deep stream is to fell a tree, or two trees side by side, on the bank, so that they fall across the stream. With an adze you then flatten the top side. Put up a handrail, and there you have a very good bridge.
A simple bridge may be made from two trestles. The diagram shows you the arrangement of the parts. All the lashings are square except the one of the central crossing, w hich is diagonal.
Rafts, too, can be used to cross a stream.
Build your raft alongside the bank—in the water, if the river is shallow; on the bank if it is deep. When the raft is finished, hold on to the down-stream end, push the other out from the bank, and let the stream carry it down into position.
Some of the “bridges” of Kashmir, in India, consist of a single rope.
HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS
Start a wood-working class, or instruction in electricity, or plumbing, elementary engineering, etc., with a view to teaching the boys handicrafts that may be of real use to them in their future life. If you do not know enough about it yourself, get a friend to come and demonstrate with models or instruments for a few evenings.
Get leave to take the Scouts over a factory to study the engines, etc. Teach the boys to chop firewood. Teach them to make wooden mechanical toys (from one or two cheap ones as models). Thereby teaching them elementary mechanics and handiness with tools.
Self Measures
Every pioneer should know his exact personal measurement in the following details, of which I
give the average man’s measure:
Nail joint of forefinger, or breadth of thumb ...................................1 inch
Span of thumb and forefinger ..........................................................8 inches
Span of thumb and little finger ........................................................9 inches
Wrist to elbow (this also gives you the length of your foot)..........10 inches
Elbow to tip of forefinger (called “cubit”).....................................17 inches
Middle of kneecap to ground .........................................................18 inches
Extended arms, from finger-tip to finger-tip, is called a “fathom” and nearly equals your height.
Pulse beats about 75 times a minute. Each beat is a little quicker than a second.
Step: A step is about 2? feet; about 120 steps equal 100 yards. Fast walking steps are shorter than slow ones.
Fast walking you walk a mile in 16 minutes, or nearly four miles an hour.
Judging Distances
Every Scout should be able to judge distance from an inch up to a mile and more.
If you remember your self measures accurately, they are a great help to you in measuring things. Also it is useful to cut notches in your staff, showing such measurements as one inch, six inches, one foot, and one yard. These you can measure off with a tape measure before you use your staff.
Judging the distance of a journey is generally done by seeing how long you have been travelling, and at what rate.
Suppose you walk at the rate of four miles an hour. If you have been walking for an hour and a half you know that you have done about six miles.
Distance can also be judged by sound. If you see a gun fired in the distance, and you count the number of seconds between the flash and the sound of the explosion reaching you, you will be able to tell how far off you are from the gun. Sound travels at the rate of 365 yards in a second—
as many yards as there are days in the year.
Test the following from your own observations:
At 50 yards, mouth and eyes of a person can be clearly seen. At 100 yards, eyes appear as dots. At 200 yards, buttons and details of uniform can still be seen. At 300 yards, face can be seen. At 400 yards, the movement of the legs can be seen. At 500 yards the colour of the uniform can be seen.
