TILE AND THATCHED ROOFS. 239 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



Roofs; Shingles; Tile; Thatch: The Advantages and Disadvantages of 

 each The use of Thatch in America Hereford Christian Hospitality 

 A Milk Farm The Herefords A Dangerous Man Primitive Chris- 

 tianity. 



QOMEWHERE in this region, we passed two small churches 

 *J or chapels with roofs of wooden shingles ; in both cases the 

 pitch of the roof was very steep, and the shingles old, warped 

 and mossy. These were the only shingle roofs I recollect to 

 have seen in England ; but I was told they were not very un- 

 common upon old farm-buildings in Devonshire. The roofs 

 hereabouts, generally, are of flat tile. In moulding these tile, 

 which are of equal thickness at both ends, a hole is made in the 

 upper part, by which they are pegged to slats, which run hori- 

 zontally across the rafters; (about London a protuberance is 

 moulded upon the tile, by which it is hung.) This peg is cov- 

 ered, as the nails of a shingle are, by the lower part of the tile 

 of the next tier above it. If no precaution to prevent it is taken, 

 there will sometimes be crevices in a tile roof, through which 

 snow will drive ; in dwellings, a thin layer of straw is often laid 

 under the tile, and sometimes they are laid in mortar. Pan-tiles 

 (common on old houses in New York) are also made tight with 

 mortar. Roofs of this kind will last here about twice as long as 



