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Online Exhibit: Hall Cabin: Inside Hall Cabin

Inside Hall Cabin

Objects from day to day life reveal clues to the experiences of people who used them. Beyond the individuals in these photographs, each object shown had a specific purpose. In reviewing these images and the quotes about object use, consider what current objects perform these same functions. What has changed? What has stayed the same?

Some sort of baker is almost essential for comfortable life in the woods. The most portable for is the folding reflector sold by most outfitters. It is similar to those that our great-grandmothers used to bake biscuits in, before a hearth fire. The top slants like a shed roof, and the bottom like another shed roof turned upside down, the bread pan being in the middle. The slanting top and bottom reflect heat downward upon the top of the baking and heat upward against its bottom, so that bread, for instance, bakes evenly all around.

- Camping and Woodcraft, Volume 1, page 121.

Cooking inside Hall Cabin - with veiw of reflector oven

Croquettes - Two cups minced meat or game of any kind, 1/2 cup bread or cracker crumbs, 1 1/2 egg, melted butter. Roll meat, seasoning, and enough of the butter to moisten, into pear-shaped balls. Dip in beaten eggs and crumbs. Fry, with enough butter, to a nice brown.

Venison Sausages - Utilize the tougher parts of the deer, or other game, by mincing the raw meat with half as much salt pork, season with pepper and sage, make into little pats, and fry like sausages. Very good.

- Camping and Woodcraft, Volume 1, page 307.

Dinner inside Hall Cabin - with view of meat grinder

Footwear - It is a truism that "a soldier is no better than his feet." Neither is anybody else who has much walking to do. Such shoes as we wear in town are wholly unfot for the field. They are too light, too short, and too narrow. We do little walking in town, and none that we do is over rough ground. We carry no burdens on our backs. So the "snug fit" is tolerated, and the thin socks.

- Camping and Woodcraft, Volume 1, page 150.

The bunk inside Hall Cabin - with view of Kephart's shoes
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