Concentrate on Your Job
When you are acting as scout or guide for a party, move ahead of it and fix your whole attention and all your thoughts on what you are doing. You have to go by the very smallest signs, and if you talk and think of other things you are very apt to miss them. Old scouts generally are very silent people, from this habit of fixing their attention on the work in hand.
Very often a “tenderfoot” out for the first time will think that the leading scout looks lonely and will go up to walk or ride alongside of him and begin a conversation—until the scout shows by his manner or otherwise that he does not want the ‘‘tenderfoot” there.
On small steamers you may see a notice, “Don’t speak to the man at the wheel”. The same thing applies to a scout who is guiding a party.
Using a Compass
I am certain that you know that the needle of a compass has the habit of swinging round until it points in one definite direction.
If you followed the direction indicated by one end of the needle you would come out at a spot north of Canada, about 1400 miles from the North Pole. The reason for this is that at this spot there is a powerful magnetic force. It is this force which attracts the north point of the needle and
makes it point to “Magnetic North”.
North is only one of the compass points. Every sailor knows the other points of the compass by heart, and so should a Scout. I have talked a
good deal about north, but that is only because we usually figure north as a starting point. That is just for convenience—we could just as well use south.
Explorers seldom refer to compass points. They use compass degrees instead because they are more exact.
When you look at the compass chart you will notice that it is marked not only with the points, but also with figures running clockwise from 0
at the north point round to north again which also has the figure 360. So any point can be given either as a compass name or as a degree number. Thus, east is 90 degrees, south is 180, west is 270, and so on. Instead of saying S.E. we can say 135 degrees.
How a Compass Helped My Career
Knowing the right way to use a compass helped to give me a good start in my army career.
It was this way:
With a number of other young officers I was being tested in surveying. We had to take a reading with our compass to a certain spot, and from there to another point, and from there to a third point. If one did it correctly, this last reading should land us exactly at the spot whence we started.
But it means extreme care to take an accurate reading. If you misread your compass’ by not much more than a hair’s breadth you would fail. Only one of our party had been exact enough to succeed, and who do think that was?
Little me!
As a result of this and a few good marks in other subjects, I got promoted with extra pay, with which I was able to buy the best horse I ever had.
Compass work means extreme care to take an accurate reading
Finding the North without a Compass
Besides the “Magnetic North” which you find with your compass, there is the other north of the North Pole at the top of the earth. This
is the real north and for that reason is named “True North”.
North by the Sun
If you have no compass to show you “Magnetic North”, the sun will tell you by day where “True North” is, and from that you can figure out the other directions.
At six o’clock in the morning (standard time) the sun is east. At nine he is south-east. At noon he is south. At three o’clock in the afternoon he is south-west, and at six o’clock he is west. In winter he will have set before six o’clock, but he will not have reached west when he is set. This
applies roughly in the Northern Hemisphere. (In the Southern Hemisphere, at six o’clock the sun is east, at nine north-east, at noon north, at three north-west, at six west.)
The Phoenicians who sailed round Africa in ancient times noticed that when they started the sun rose on their left-hand side—they were going south. Then they reported they came to a strange country where the sun rose in the wrong quarter, namely on their right hand. The truth was that
they had gone round the Cape of Good Hope, and were headed north again, up the east side of
Africa.
When the sun is out, a watch will help you find your direction
To find the south at any time of day by the sun, hold your watch flat, face upwards, so that the sun shines on it. Turn it round till the hour hand points at the sun. Without moving the watch, lay a pencil or stick across the face of the watch so that it rests on the centre of the dial and points out half-way between the figure XII and the hour hand. The direction in which it points is south. This applies only in the Northern Hemisphere. (In the Southern Hemisphere turn the XII, instead of the hand, to the sun, and south will then lie between the two as before.)
North by the Stars
Various groups of stars have been given names because they seemed to make some kind of picture outline of men and animals.
Two stars of the Plough or Big Dipper point towards the Pole Star
The Big Dipper or Plough is an easy one to find. It is shaped something like a dipper or a plough. It is the most useful star group for a Scout to know, because in the northern part of the world it shows him where north is. The Plough is part of the Great Bear. The stars in the curve make its tail. It is the only bear I know that wears a long tail.
Pole Star—The two stars in the Plough called the Pointers tell you where the North or Pole Star is. It is the last star in the tail of the Little Bear. All stars and constellations move round the sky during the night, but the Pole Star remains fixed in the north.
Orion—Another group of stars, or constellations, represents a man wearing a sword and belt, and is named Orion. It is easily recognized by three stars in a line, the “belt”, and three smaller stars in another line, close by, the “sword”. Two stars to right and left below the sword are Orion’s feet, two more above the belt are his shoulders, and a group of three small stars between them make his head.
The Zulus call Orion’s belt and sword the “Ingolubu”, or three pigs pursued by three dogs. The Masai tribe in East Africa say that the three stars in Orion’s belt are three bachelors being followed by three old maids. You see, scouts all know Orion, though under different names.
The great point about Orion is that by him you can always tell which way the North or Pole Star lies, and you can see him whether you are in the south or the north part of the world.
If you draw a line, by holding up your staff against the sky, from the centre star of Orion’s belt through the centre of his head,