The paradox of canvas: When shelter becomes a cage

“ It is not immovably bound to one dull spot of earth by the chains of a cellar and a system of water-pipes. It has a noble freedom of locomotion. It follows the wishes of its inhabitants, and goes with them, a travelling home, as the spirit moves them to explore the wilderness. At their pleasure, new beds of wild flowers surround it, new plantations of trees overshadow it, and new avenues of shining water lead to its ever-open door. What the tent lacks in luxury it makes up in liberty: or rather let us say that liberty itself is the greatest luxury. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of all this pageantry, which seems so strongly to have acted upon your mind, I must inform you that there is no human being exposed to suffer a greater degree of hardship; he is often obliged to march whole days in the most violent heat, or cold, or rain, and frequently without victuals to eat, or clothes to cover him; and when he stops at night, the most that he can expect is a miserable canvas tent to shelter him, which is penetrated in every part by the wet, and a little straw to keep his body from the damp unwholesome earth. ”

“ And the dry shirt one could put on within that shelter, with the rain, rain outside! When you have slept out in all weathers you begin to understand the full luxury of a tent like ours, with its furs and warmth and a decent pipe out of the wind. It is a moving home. To be free of the weather, to let it rain if it wants to, to lie and listen to it, these are all thrilling pleasures, pleasures because of the contrast to the wet open camp where, in spite of the covered and sweating head and body, the pitiless rain trickles in pools into your bed. ”

“ To be here watching the mottled wet green walls of our tent, the glistening wet bamboos, the bedraggled sopping socks and loose articles dangling in the middle, the saddened countenances of my companions—to hear the everlasting patter of the falling snow and the ceaseless rattle of the fluttering canvas—to feel the wet clinging dampness of clothes and everything touched, and to know that without there is but a blank wall of white on every side—these are the physical surroundings. Add the stress of sighted failure of our whole plan, and anyone must find the circumstances unenviable. ”

“ Such a man has not upon his mind the shadow of a care; for the worst bed which he can meet with is the turf; and he seldom enjoys a better than his cloak or blanket. Give him but a tent—and with tents the commander of the forces had lately supplied us—and he is in luxury; at least as long as the summer lasts, or the weather continues moderate; nor had we as yet experienced any blasts against which our tents furnished not a sufficient shelter. ”

“ It is an endless pleasure to lie half awake watching the stars above, and the picturesque groupings of the encampment round about, and to hear on all sides the stirrings of animal life. And later in the night, when the fire is low, and servants and cattle are asleep, and there is no sound but of the wind and an occasional plaintive cry of wild animals, the traveller finds himself in that close communion with nature which is the true charm of wild travel. Now all this pleasure is lost by sleeping in a tent. Tent life is semi-civilization, and perpetuates its habits. ”

“ The majority of them appear to be without shelter, and what shelter they have consists of the flimsiest kind of tent, improvised out of a few sticks covered with rugs or carpets in a few instances, but often only with cotton cloth—absolutely no protection from the heavy autumn rains which will soon be coming. The station-master, whom I have known as a reliable man for several years, told me that the people had been treated with every kind of brutality, the police ostensibly trying to prevent the Turks from molesting them by day, but aiding and abetting them by night. ”

“ The difficulties and misery and privations to which the Boer families are subject after having been driven from their farms (their journeys often lasting about 20 days) .
2. The insufficient quantity and frequently even bad quality of articles of food distributed among them. Often the food given to the children is in every respect inadequate to their wants.
[119] 3. The great fall in temperature during the night.
4. The insufficient protection against cold experienced in the tents by the healthy population, and all the more by the invalids.
5. The absence of clothing and blankets. ”

“ Luxury is there, surely, but it is the luxury that rewards effort, and privation, and toil. It is the comfort of food and warmth and dry clothes after a day of endurance—a day of wet, and dragging weariness, and bitter chill. It is the bliss of reaching, after long, toilsome travel, a place where you can meet the trout—the splendid, full-grown wild trout, in his native home, knowing that you will not find a picnic party on every brook and a fisherman behind every tree. ”

“ All through the night there was a heavy downpour of rain, and as I listened to it pattering on the canvas of our tent, snugly rolled up in my warm capa, I thought, with a shudder, in what a different plight I should have then been had we not had the good fortune to meet the Indians. Instead of lying warm and dry under the shelter of the tent, we should doubtless have been stretched somewhere on the muddy ground, in damp clothes and soaking furs, hungry and sleepless, and exposed to the inclemency of the weather, without even the means of making a fire. ”

“ If sometimes we happened to spend a night under the eaves of a house, sheltered from inclement weather, but smelling all the time the unsavory odor of pigs and garlic, it seemed as great a luxury as sleeping under silk comfortables in an elegant room at home. Tents were our ordinary dwelling; one sheet of canvas was everything to us, shutting off wind and rain, and making our condition far better than if we had been obliged to lie in the damp open fields with the earth as our bed. ”

“ Many wrap themselves in their sheet or blanket, if they have one, and lie down on the ground without any idea they are enduring hardship. Others rig out a temporary tent [Pg 104] with sticks and a blanket over it, creep under this, and deem themselves luxuriously accommodated. This gathering at Allahabad is in the cold weather, and if the nights be very cold, as they sometimes are at that season, no doubt many suffer severely. Every now and then heavy rain falls, and then, as may be supposed, the suffering is extreme. ”

“ We look back with pleasure to the quiet camp in a gravel-pit on a hill-top far from the haunts of men—to the pitching of the tent by moonlight in a meadow where the mushrooms gleamed like snow, to be duly gathered for the frying-pan next morning by the host-in-himself, and in pyjamas. Nor are the sterner sides of caravan life to be forgotten—the calamity at the brow of a steep hill, where a nasty turn made the steady old wheeler for once lose his head and his legs ”

“ I have already hinted that against heavy and continued rains a tent supplies but an inadequate shelter. A tent is, moreover, but a narrow chamber, in which it is not easy so much as to stand upright, excepting in one [Pg 148] spot, and where all opportunity of locomotion is denied. It furnishes, moreover, little protection against cold—to light a fire within being impossible on account of the smoke; and hence the only means of keeping yourself warm is to wrap your cloak or a blanket about you, and to lie down. Occasionally, indeed, I have seen red-hot shot employed as heaters ”

“ Stormy wind and tempest, torrential rain and hail, beat down or tore up the tents; armour rusted, clothes rotted, biscuits and bacon were so soaked that they became putrid; horses died, men sickened; and in less than a week “the wise Templars, the brave Hospitaliers, and the men of the land” came to the conclusion that under the existing circumstances an attempt to besiege Jerusalem could lead to nothing but disaster. ”

“ When the stream is swollen after a heavy rain, the cascade loses its beauty, but becomes madly wild. Before we had erected our tent, the clouds, which had been lowering over us, began to pour down their contents upon us. We were all unprepared. Our provisions, clothing, and blankets were all wet. We find—too late, alas!—that we have committed the same kind of error with Cowper’s birds, who anticipated pairing time, and built their nests too early. We had thought the winter over and gone, and the rainy season past, and, leaving our winter homes, had only a small and leaky tent for our shelter. ”

“ In truth, the tent is a very uncomfortable and unhealthy make-shift; cold, hot, and damp, by turns, and often badly ventilated. A simple lean-to shelter, and a roaring fire are infinitely preferable where wood is abundant. ”

“ The cold of a night was intense, and our men suffered much. Even in the excellent tent of Kaid Maclean, with every possible invention to keep out sun and frost, we had the greatest difficulty in keeping warm. The early mornings, too, were miserable, when, while the camp was being struck and the mules laden, I would crouch over the remnants of a small fire and try to warm myself. It was always too cold to ride, and we used to give our horses to the men to lead while we stepped out as fast as our legs would carry us over the level plain. ”

“ The dampness of the coverings and clothes, from the condensation of the steam on the rime, of course increased, and the opening of the tent door occasioned a fall of snow within, so that by the time the cooking was over, all was covered with a thick coating of ice or crust of snow.
“It is about eight or nine o’clock: the small rations of boiled beef, soup, and vegetables are no longer enough to allay the daily increasing hunger; but sleep buries that, as well as our burning thirst, in oblivion. Only occasionally did our sparing supply of spirits allow us to prepare an extra quantity of water. ”

“ Woe to the unfortunate man who, in a lull of the storm, goes into the open air. He is almost torn to pieces, stifled by the snow-filled air, betrayed into snow-drifts, and yet not daring to open his eyes. Numbed with cold, white as a miller, he returns to the tent. Here he is a subject of horror to his neighbours in the sack, whom he intends robbing of their warmth to thaw himself. The snow-powder blown in upon the opening of the tent door has penetrated through all the clothes, and the skin has to be scraped and any frost-bites that may have set in have to be dispersed by rubbing. ”

“ When we were lucky and not too cold we could almost wring water from our clothes, and directly we got out of our sleeping-bags we were frozen into solid sheets of armoured ice. In cold temperatures with all the advantages of a tent over our heads we were already taking more than an hour of fierce struggling and cramp to get into our sleeping-bags—so frozen were they and so long did it take us to thaw our way in. No! Without the tent we were dead men.
Mt. Erebus
Ice Pressure At A
And there seemed not one chance in a million that we should ever see our tent again. ”

“ I know now that I have several members of my body, and these tell me in the most unmistakable manner that there must be no more getting over the rough snow and ice, and that the discomforts of a cold smoky tent must be no longer endured, unless there be absolute necessity. They tell me that, for the future, winter travelling must not be indulged in. And [203] we must bow to the inevitable; we cannot be always young ”

“ Is hell to see poor frames, Wan, leathery cheeks, and dull, despairing eyes, From whence a low-flamed madness ebbing out, Goes slowly deathward, through the eerie hours, To hear forever pitiless, icy winds Feel in the shivering canvas of the tent, With idle, brute curiosity nature hath, While out around, one universe of death, Stretches the loveless, hearthless arctic night? ”

“ No people on earth endure such hardships as this my people; never enough to eat, burnt in the summer, frozen in the winter, buried in sand, tortured with thirst, fleeing from place to place, never at peace, yet always happy in his miserable tent.
"For the gazu or raid on caravan or camp, which will yield booty of horse, or camel, or women—well! that is in the blood, and both sides are prepared. If you or they should have the better horses, or the better cunning, both of which we of the East so dearly love, one can hardly be expected to sympathise with those who lose from want of forethought." ”

“ It is a hard test of patience, when the soul quivering with its own suffering yearns to plunge into some great matter—to endure, to do, to sacrifice—and feels within its aching veins the spirit of a Xavier, eagerly flying to the painfullest labour, and refusing the solace of usual comfort—to have the blank of a steady endurance offered to it instead; to be compelled to yoke its turbulent might of grief again to the common toils of every day; to put on the usual smile, to draw the usual outer garment of ease and seeming peacefulness over the wild pulses of a wounded heart. ”

“ Little monotonies of this kind form the hardest part of winter travel, they are the rocks upon which friendships founder and partnerships are wrecked. Out on the trail, nature equalizes the work to a great extent, and no man can shirk unduly, but in camp, inside the cramped confines of a tent pitched on boughs laid over the snow, it is very different. There one must busy himself while the other rests and keeps his legs out of the way if possible. ”

“ I began to dress. I picked up my towel and soap and loosened the flap once again. I felt I had to go out and wash, for I had not washed at all on the previous day, fearing the dirty, freezing water and the piercing wind. I longed to remain in the warm tent, and for a moment I wavered. Then, with an effort of the will I suppressed the strong temptation, and squeezing through the tent-opening, I stepped out into the oozy mud. The black night seemed to weigh heavily on the world. Only here and there dull glimmering blurs showed that candles were burning in the other tents. ”

“ From good to bad, and from bad to worse,
From worse unto that is worst of all,
And then return to his former fall?
Who will not suffer the stormy time,
Where will he live till the lusty prime?
Self have I worn out thrice thirty years,
Some in much joy, many in many tears,
Yet never complained of cold nor heat,
Of summer's flame, nor of winter's threat,
Ne ever was to Fortune foeman,
But gently took that ungently came;
And ever my flock was my chief care;
Winter or summer they might well fare.
CUD. No marvel, Thenot, if thou can bear
Cheerfully the winter's wrathful cheer ”

“ but modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst. ”

“ Everywhere is the grasping hand, And eager adding of land to land; And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,— A nightly shelter to fold away When the Lord should call at the break of day,— Solid and steadfast seems to be, And Time has forgotten Eternity! ”

“ And yet at the back of his man's soul he knew that by that very forbearance his every natural impulse condemned, he had strengthened his position, he had laid the foundation-stone of a fabric that would endure against storm and tempest. The house that he would build would be an abiding-place—no swiftly raised tent upon the sand. It would take time to build it, infinite care, possibly untold sacrifice. But when built, it would be absolutely solid, proof for all time against every wind that blew. For every stone would be laid with care and made fast with the cement that is indestructible. ”

“ Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. ”

“ For some great love with faithfulness unfailing
Will light the stars to bear him company.
Out in the silence of the mountain passes,
The heart makes peace and liberty its own—
The wind that blows across the scented grasses
Bringing the balm of sleep—comes not alone.
Beneath the vast illimitable spaces
Where God has set His jewels in array,
A man may pitch his tent in desert places
Yet know that heaven is not so far away. ”