98 CRUSOE'S ISLAND. 



terial at the hill, and rapidly built my house. The 

 lumber was not any too well seasoned, having but a 

 month or so for drying, but it answered well enough. 

 I used, for the walls of the house and the outside 

 covering, strips riven from palm logs, which made it 

 look like what it really was, a log hut. It was of one 

 story only, but being perched on the summit of the 

 hill it was dry and well drained, and even had a cellar 

 beneath it. There was a door in the center and two 

 windows, t4ie latter protected by shutters, as I had no 

 glass. These openings looked out toward the north, 

 and, that I might the better enjoy the magnificent view 

 outspread in this direction, I built a broad veranda run- 

 ning the entire length of the structure. 



Two things I decided to have in this new house 

 of mine if I had nothing else : a veranda and a fire- 

 place. By people in general these are regarded as 

 superfluities, especially the fireplace, which can easily 

 be dispensed with in the tropics ; but I knew better. 

 I was not building merely for a shelter, but for the 

 gratification of my home-loving nature as well, and a 

 home without a hearthstone is just no home at all ! 



The temperate zone, which has produced the 

 brightest exemplars of intellectual humanity, is in- 

 debted to the hearthstone for its highest culture. 

 In the tropics man is lost in the immensity of Nature, 

 his powers are dissipated, he loses the faculty of con- 

 centration. Only within the shelter of walls, shut in 

 by the "tumultuous privacy of storm," and by the 

 side of the bright hearth fire, have the greatest minds 

 produced the greatest works. That may be an opin- 



