A single spark will perhaps burn your haystacks, but when you want a fire it seldom will burn, out of sheer obstinacy; therefore, take a wisp of dry grass, into which push the burning linen and give it a rapid, circular motion through the air, which will generally set it in a blaze.
Then pile gently upon it the smallest and driest sticks, increasing their size as the fire grows till it is all right; and you will sit down proudly before your own fire, thoroughly confident that you are the first person that ever made one properly.
There is some comfort in that; and having manufactured your own house and bed, you will lie down snugly and think of dinner till you fall asleep, and the crowing of the jungle-cocks will wake you in the morning.
The happiest hours of my life have been passed in this rural solitude.
I have started from home with nothing but a couple of blankets and the hounds, and, with one blanket wrapped round me I have slept beneath a capital tent formed of the other with two forked sticks and a horizontal pole--the ends of the blanket being secured by heavy stones, thus-- This is a more comfortable berth than it may appear at first sight, especially if one end is stopped up with boughs.

The ridge-pole being only two feet and a half high, renders it necessary to crawl in on all-fours; but this lowness of ceiling has its advantages in not catching the wind, and likewise in its warmth.

A blanket roof, well secured and tightly strained, will keep off the heaviest rain for a much longer period than a common tent; but in thoroughly wet weather any woven roof is more or less uncomfortable.
I recollect a certain bivouac in the Angora patinas for a few days' hunting, when I was suddenly seized with a botanical fit in a culinary point of view, and I was determined to make the jungle subscribe something toward the dinner.

To my delight, I discovered some plants which, from the appearance of their leaves, I knew were a species of wild yam; they grew in a ravine on the swampy soil of a sluggish spring, and the ground being loose, I soon grubbed them up and found a most satisfactory quantity of yams about the size of large potatoes--not bad things for dinner.

Accordingly, they were soon transferred to the pot.