Friday, April 7, 2023

blending / assuming the look of an overturned stump

Above  Cartoon from Lilliput Magazine, date and artist unknown.

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Arthur Henry Howard Heming, The Drama of the Forests, Romance and Adventure.  Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Co, p. 61—

As regards trailing game, whether large or small, he [a Canadian Native American] cautioned me to watch my quarry carefully, and instantly to become rigid at the first sign that the game was about to turn round or raise its head to peer in my direction. More than that, I should not only remain motionless while the animal was gazing toward me, but I should assume at once some form that suggested the character of the surrounding trees or bushes or rocks. For example, among straight-boled, perfectly vertical trees, I should stand upright; among uprooted trees, I should assume the character of an overturned stump, by standing with inclined body, bent legs, and arms and fingers thrust out at such angles as to suggest the roots of a fallen tree. And he added that if I doubted the wisdom of such an act, I should test it at a distance of fifty or a hundred paces, and prove the difficulty of detecting a man who assumed a characteristic landscape pose among trees or rocks. That was years before the World War had brought the word camouflage into general use; for as a matter of fact, the forest Indians had been practicing camouflage for centuries and, no doubt, that was one reason why many of the Indians in the Canadian Expeditionary Force did such remarkable work as snipers.