THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 581 



A stride toward the house is taken when the branches are replaced 

 by a regular woodwork, with doors and windows; the envelope being 

 still sometimes canvas, which is soon replaced by corrugated iron. 

 The Brazilian country house where Darwin lodged sixty years ago 

 was built of upright posts with interwoven boughs. Another line 

 of development starts from the trunk of the tree. The early 

 American colonists made bark wigwams. The Australian pastoralist 

 " erected a temporary house, generally of large sheets of bark, in 

 the first instance." In countries where the winter is more severe or 

 the bark less substantial, the backwoodsman builds, as the early 

 colonist built, a rude cabin of round logs. Then the logs are hewn, 

 or they are split or sawn into planks, and built into the weatherboard 

 houses still common in the rural parts of Australia, and general even 

 in New Zealand towns. In their earliest stages they are still without 

 a floor and are roofed with thatch or shingle. Towns often thus re- 

 main like early Sydney, " a mere assemblage of paltry erections in- 

 termediate between the hut and the house." The architecture is of 

 the simplest. A " butt " and a " ben," with a " lean-to," form the 

 prevailing type. As the family grows or its wealth increases, new 

 portions are added, till many colonial houses look for all the world 

 as if they had " come out in penny numbers." Even with a few 

 stately structures — luxurious mansions, extensive government offices, 

 Gothic parliamentary buildings — a wooden city has an indefinable 

 meanness of appearance. It is improved out of existence by the dread 

 agency of fire. Like Charles's London, New Orleans and many 

 another colonial town have thus had an Augustan renewal. Houses 

 are now built of brick, stone, or concrete; tile, slate, and iron re- 

 placed thatch and shingle; two stories were ventured on; chimneys 

 were smaller but safer. They became susceptible of architecture: 

 Spanish features were introduced into those of New Orleans; the 

 more northern colonies copied the English country house, with modi- 

 fications to suit the hotter or colder climate ; and in New South Wales 

 a taste for mansion-building came into vogue along with splendid 

 equipages, liveried servants, and pedigrees. Such houses were at first 

 arranged in all degrees of irregularity and confusion. The street is a 

 modern invention. The cows returning from pasture laid out Bos- 

 ton, and the bullock teams climbing up from the harbor charted 

 Sydney. Towns in manufactured colonies, as Savannah, Augusta, 

 most South American cities, Christchurch and Invercargill in New 

 Zealand, were planned before settlement and have their streets at 

 right angles. 



A hundred years ago Talleyrand, exiled in the United States, de- 

 scribed the journey from one of these cities to the interior as suc- 

 cessively exhibiting all past stages of the human habitation from the 



