Marks for the Way-side. 289
days coasting sailors occasionally took pigeons with them, and when they had lost their bearings they let one fly, which it did at once to the land.
To follow a -Track at Night.-Where the track is well marked, showers of sparks, ably struck with a flint and steel, are sufficient to show it, without taking the pains of making a flame.
Smell of an Old Track.-The earth of an old and welltrodden road has a perceptible smell, from the dung and trampling of animals passing over it, especially near to encampments. It is usual at night, when a guide doubts whether or no he is in the track, to take up handfuls of dirt and smell it. It is notorious that cattle can smell out a road.
MARKS FOR THE WAY-SIDE.
Marks on Trees- Cutting Marks.-A very excellent "treeline " is made by cutting deep notches in a line of trees, starting from some conspicuous object, so that the notches will face the men that are to be guided by it : the trees must be so selected that three, or at least two of them, are in sight at once. The notch or sliced bark of a tree is called a " blaze " in bush language. These blazed trees are of much use as finger-posts on a dark night. They are best made by two persons; one chipping the trees on his right, and the other those on his left. If the axes are quite sharp, they only need to be dropped against the tree in order to make the chip. Doing so, hardly retards a person in• his walking. Another way more suitable to some kinds of forests, is to strike the knife into the left side of the tree, to tear down a foot of bark, and to leave the bark hanging, for a double extent of white surface is shown in this way. Also, to break down tops of saplings and leave them hanging : the under sides of the leaves being paler than the upper, and the different lines of the reversed foliage make a broken bush to look unnatural among healthy trees, and it quickly arrests the attention. If you want a tree to be well-scored or slashed, so as to draw attention to it without fail, fire bullets into it, as into a mark, and let the natives cut them out in their own
