16 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



hard experience, that to saw through the heavy logs for 

 the purpose of cutting out the doorways and windows is 

 the hardest and most back-aching work in making a log- 

 hut. Sometimes no windows are made, on account of 

 the trouble of glazing them. If you are wide-awake, 

 you bring up a few sheets of window-glass with you, 

 which must be carefully packed to avoid breakage ; or 

 you may nail the skin of a fox or other small animal 

 over the orifice. If the skin is well stretched, all the 

 hair scraped oft', and the skin rubbed thin with a piece of 

 broken glass or a knife, it will admit light. But better 

 still is the skin of a large fish, if you can capture a 

 muskinongi or a sturgeon. 



For the fireplace, the best way is to cut an opening 

 at the end of the hut, and build the chimney outside of 

 fragments of rock or stone, using mud for mortar. A 

 very tenacious mortar may be made with slime from the 

 swamps, well mingled with deer-hair, feathers, &c. &c., 

 from the game killed daily. Moss is excellent for mixing 

 with mud to form cement, but if used for chimneys is 

 apt to take fire. There is no danger of this with hair 

 or feathers. 



The floor of the hut is generally the earth beaten 

 down hard and covered with small spruce branches, and 

 the furniture consists of roughly made stools and tables. 

 The bedstead is a low platform, or table, in one corner ; 

 and the cooking utensils, &c., you will have brought up 

 country with -you. 



Settlers with families sometimes make a ceiling with 

 rough boards, thus forming an upper chamber in the 

 roof, reached, by means of a ladder, through a trap-door. 

 In such cases the upper chamber is usually a storeroom 

 as well as a sleeping- place ; and really it is hard to 

 believe, after witnessing the manner in which these 

 people " pig " together in the midst of strong-smelling 

 stores, that overcrowding is dangerous to health. It 

 certainly is not in the backwoods, for healthier little 



