Because it was from a somewhat similar device at a camp meeting in Florida, that the author got the suggestion for his "torch fire." The platform is made of anything handy and is covered with a thick flooring of sod, sand or clay for the fire-place.

The tower is built exactly similar to the Boy Scout signal towers but on a smaller scale (Fig. 52).

Danger Of Exploding Stones

However tempting a smooth rock may look as a convenient spot on which a fire may be built, do not fail to spread a few shovels of sand, earth or clay on the stone as a fire bed, for the damp rock on becoming heated may generate steam and either expand with some violence or burst like a bombshell and scatter far and wide the fragments, even endangering the lives of those gathered around the fire.