Recognized HTML document

Huts.

145

them judiciously here ansi there, by means of other boughs, laid horizontally. Then, by heaping leaves-and especially broad pieces of bark, if you can get them-over all, and banking up the earth on either side, pretty high, an excellent kennel is made. If daubed over with mud, clay, or cattledung, the hut becomes more secure egainst the weather. To proceed a step fluther:-as many poles may be planted in the ground as sticks have been employed in making the roof; and then the roof may be lifted bodily in the air, and lashed to the top of the poles, each stick to its corresponding pole. This sort of structure is very common among savages.

For methods of digging holes in which to plant the hutpoles, see the chapter on " Wells." The holes made in the way I have there explained are far better than those dug with spades ; for they disturb no more of the hardened ground than is necessary for the insertion of the palisades. To jam a pole tightly in its place, wedges of wood should be driven in at its side, and earth rammed down between the wedges.

Palisades are excellent as walls or as enclosures. They are erected of vast lengths, by savages wholly destitute of tools, both for the purposes of fortification and also for completing lines of pitfalls across wide valleys. The pitfalls occupy gaps left in the palisading. The savages burn down the trees in the following manner :-a party of men go to the forest, and light small fires ronrnd the roots of the trees they propose to fell. The fires are prevented from flaming upwards by the judicious application of leaves, &c. When the fire has eaten a little way into the tree, the man who watches it scrapes the fire aside and knocks away the charred wood, exposing a fresh surface for fire to act upon, and then replaces the burning embers. A single man may easily attend to a dozen trees, and, indeed, to many more, if the night be calm. Some hours elapse before the trees actually fall. Their tops and branches are burnt off as they lie on the ground. The. poles being thus procured for the palisading, they are carried to the required place, where holes are dug for their reception, on the principle described in "Wells," to which I have just alluded.

Straw or Peed Walls of the following kind are very effective,