Q^S Rural School Leaflet. 



and lumber sawed, men studied the best wa3''S of making houses. Their 

 clothing and simple furniture and their food had to be found from the 

 soil and from the forest. 



Some of the African tribes pull together the branches of trees and 

 intertwine them to make a shelter for themselves in this day. But the 

 climate and the wild animals made this impossible in New England. 



The cave was another ancient form of house building which the early 

 settlers adopted. This they dug four or five feet in the side of a hill or 

 sometimes they saved themselves this trouble and used the caves the 

 wild animals had dug. Poles and brush were cut to build the walls 

 and sods laid over them to fill in the spaces. The roof was made of tree 

 limbs covered over with bark or soil and a chimney built of stones and 

 sticks of wood, filled with clay and grass, for they must have fires. Later 

 on the settlers became more ambitious and the cave was made into a 

 cellar for the new home with a house over it. 



The settlers copied the wigwams of the Indians who were in the coun- 

 try when the white settlers came. In the south, layers of palmetto leaves 

 and plaited rush were used for the walls of the wigwam and deer skins 

 were pinned on the frames for shelter. 



On camping trips nowadays in the mountains we enjoy the same sort 

 of wigwam with one side open and in front of this the big fire. In the 

 mild climates in early days such shelters were considered very good 

 homes. We know of at least one President who lived in one of these 

 in his youth. As time went on, the log cabin became very common for 

 the settler's axe had been busy. Now and then in these days we come 

 across one of these picturesque log cabins. The sides were built of 

 logs, joined at the corners, placed one on top of the other and the cracks 

 chinked with mud or pieces of wood. When this was not done, wolves 

 stuck their noses in at night through the cracks and sometimes their 

 sharp teeth found a human victim. 



As the settlers had more time and became more prosperous these log 

 houses were covered with boards. At first the house had only one room 

 with a big chimney, but later a room was added to each side of the 

 chimney. A bark roof covered the house. These were sometimes one 

 story high, and sometimes there was a room upstairs where the children 

 slept, a ladder leading to the loft from the room below. 



There were no hinges and no fastenings for the doors and windows as 

 now, so a log or bark shutter was hung at the window and a bark door 

 was hung on leather. A piece of leather was attached to the latch on 

 the inside and passed out through a hole in the door. A person pulling 

 a string from the outside could raise the latch and when it was necessary 



