Camp cookery (Kephart)

The following , woods will scarcely burn at all when they are green: aspen (large-toothed), black ash, balsam, box elder, buckeye, hemlock, pitch pine, sassafras, sourwood, sycamore, tamarack, tupelo (sour gum), water oak, poplar (tulip), and service berry. Butternut, chestnut, red oak, red maple, and persimmon burn very slowly in a green state. Such woods are good for backlogs, handjunks, or andirons, and for side-logs in a cookingfire that is to be used continuously. Yellow birch and white ash, on the contrary, are better for a camp-fire when green than when they are seasoned. It may be said, in general, that green wood burns best in winter, when the sap is down. Trees that grow on high, dry ground burn better than those of the same species that stand in moist soil. Chestnut cut on the summits of the southern Appalachians burns freely. even when green, and the mountain beech burns as ardently as birch. Arbor-vitae (Northern "white cedar") and chestnut burn to dead coals that do not communicate flame. They, as well as box elder, red cedar, hemlock, sassafras, tulip, balsam, tamarack, and spruce, make a great crackling and snapping in the fire. All of the soft pines, too, are prone to pop. Certain hardwoods, such as sugar maple, beech, white oak, and sometimes hickory, must be watched for a time after the fire is started, because the embers that they shoot out are long-lived, and hence more dangerous than those of softwoods; but they are splendid fuel, for all that. The following woods are very hard to split: Blue ash, box elder, buckeye, cherry, white elm, winged elm, sour gum, hemlock (generally), liquidambar (sweet gum), honey locust, sugar maple, sycamore, tupelo. Some woods, however, that are stubborn when seasoned are readily split when green, such as hickory, beech, dogwood, sugar maple, birch, and slippery elm. Firewoods that split easily are: Hackberry, red oak, basket oak, white oak, ash, and white birch. Best of all Northern firewoods is hickory, green or dry. It makes a hot fire, but lasts a long time, burning down to a bed of hard coals that keep up an even, generous heat for hours. Hickory, by the way, is distinctly an American tree; no other region on earth produces it. The live oak of the South is most excellent fuel. Following the hickory, in fuel value, are the chestnut oak, overcup, post and basket oaks, pecan, the hornbeams (ironwoods), and dogwood. The latter FIRES. ;ss ter burns finally to a beautiful white ash that is characteristic; apple wood does the same. Black birch also ranks here; it has the advantage of "doing its own blowing/' as a Carolina mountaineer said to me, meaning that the oil in the birch assists its combustion so that the wood needs no coaxing. All of the birches are good fuel, ranking in about this order: black, yellow, red, paper, and white. Sugar maple was the favorite fuel of our old-time hunters and surveyors, because it ignites easily, burns with a clear, steady flame, and leaves good coals.