As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Whenever I read historical accounts, I am always more interested in what people would deem the boring stuff, as I want to know why they do things and what kind of clothes they wear as that is far more important than the sexy stuff which is the obvious.
In reading of the lives of Martin and Osa Johnson, I have found in Martin Johnson one of the best writers of the age. His words flow and he simply tells a good story no matter what the content. In their book, LION, Mr. Johnson goes into quite exact detail why he laid out his African safari the way he did, as 18 years of experience with pleurisy, rheumatism and being sick, taught the Johnson's that creature comforts does not mean you have to live like an animal.
I remember on a hunting trip a friend of my brothers bragged when asked,"What are you going to drink?" His answer was BEER. Yeah and he was in my pop and we were all drinking artesian water and shitting like geese. Yes water is the thing often overlooked.
For the Johnsons, they arrived at the Colonel Richard Irving Dodge solution outined in his journal which was not then published in the Black Hills Expedition of 1875 AD in the year of our Lord.
Dodge ran a happy camp. By this I explain, he always had his camp in shade trees, a pretty location and he was building awnings for his tents so he could sit out and enjoy the scenery. Yes there were terrorist Indians around, but he took care of that security too, but he understood that he and his men did not have to suffer.
See if you are damp, dirty and with diarrhea, you suffer and your work suffers. You get rid of the damp, by having proper rain proof lodging and not sleeping on the ground. A good cot or bed is primary in importance.
You need to be clean as in bathed and your clothing bathed or you just feel beasty and then you start getting skin ailments in diseases, which leads to bad food, as you start living on bananas as Martin Johnson noted, and your intestines are never quite right.
That is what Richard Dodge was so indignant about in Captain Benteen appeared in the Black Hills with the 7th. Benteen was an arrogant prick, who hated authority and did not pay his respects. So Dodge's feelings were hurt, and Dodge started examining Benteen's camp, which was on a hill, few trees, in the terrible Dakota 100 degree heat and 50 mph winds, not near water, and stock and men were just miserable and it sapped all their abilities.
Yes it was defensible, but it lost all purpose in what a camp should be, as General Custer with Libby, always had their camps laid out in the best possible locations for their 7th.
That is what I found amusing in Osa Johnson brought along chickens and vegetable seeds to the wilderness of Africa. She had the boys spade the garden plot, then used empty gas cans to carry water. In a week she had radishes, corn, beets, potatoes, peas, beans, lettuce and onions, sprouted before the rains appeared.
Her chickens were growing fat and were quite pets, laying around 10 eggs a day which they feasted upon.
I give great credit to Osa Johnson in Martin mentioned, in her industry she purchased 40 pounds of butter in Nairobi, worked in 40 pounds of salt, sealed them in glass jars, and then when they wanted butter, Osa would work distilled water through the butter, remove the salt and Martin said it was as good as what would have been churned the day before in America.
This butter kept 6 months.
He even mentions Jan's Cream, which he says tastes like real cream, but that is something which will have to be looked up as the closest I could find was an Asian site that had Jans canned sunflower milk, but Nestle apparently has a canned cream too. All things to store away.
Jans Sunflower Condensed Milk 13oz - JANS - Canned Milk - FilStop
Find Jans Sunflower Condensed Milk 13oz we also carry a huge selection of Canned Milk and more products by JANS and other fine ... Nestle Table Cream 8oz ...https://www.filstop.com/jans-sunflower-condensed-milk-13oz.h
The Johnson's had visitors and I believe his camp layout taught the Afrikaans how to build a suitable safari compound which was comfortable and liveable. As their pattern appears later in other camps, and it was better than Peter Capsticks, drinking coffee in camp where you had to use your teeth to sieve out the gravel from the river in the coffee.
The Johnson's had a patent hand crank ice machine, had a water distillery and Osa was making pies, cakes and ice cream as they were running a happy camp which was not impeding their work, their lives and slowly killing them as they were not suffering. They even worked out mosquito netting with one pull of a cord, and a double lined tent roof which would not leak and kept the interior cool.
That is why I appreciate Martin Johnson in his apologizing for making a note of their camp life, as he explains a number of things and inventions which I still have not discovered as in the hand crank ice machine, which I still have to research. It is though a necessity, a necessity when the great tribulation comes that many of you are going to have to discover how to live comfortable, instead of existing in misery.
In the Kit Carson era, Americans slept on the ground and got rheumatism, pleurisy, pneumonia, and most of them were crabbed up, meaning arthritis in being broken bodies by age 50 from exposure. All of that could have been remedied in simple shelters, simple bedding and just having some creature comforts like soap for the water.
The happy camp is the surest sign of success as in the dark of night, being cold, damp, dirty with cramps in your gut is not any pleasure.
Think about it.
Nuff Said
agtG
