Tonight, we’ll read another excerpt from “Woodcraft” published by George Washington Sears, under the pen name "Nessmuk." Sears was a writer and adventurer who penned essays on hunting, fishing, and camping for popular journals and magazines.

Here is some Nessmuk lore: This book we are reading from tonight, Woodcraft, has remained generally in print ever since it was published in 1884. There is a mountain in Northern Pennsylvania named after him- Mount Nessmuk.

And finally, his hand-crafted canoe, the Sairy Gamp, was named after the Charles Dickens character  Sarah Gamp. Sarah was a comic fictional character in Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit. She was a high-spirited Cockney nurse-midwife of questionable training. The canoe Sairy Gamp was later acquired by the Smithsonian Institution.