HUT-BUILDING. 31 



engaged him to help us. This man being six feet seven inches 

 high, and the biggest man in every way I ever saw, could lift a 

 log by himself which Badger and I staggered under, and our 

 house was soon built. 



We made a door of a portion of our cart, and put in a parch- 

 ment window made of deer-hide, inserting one small pane of 

 glass, the only one they could spare me at the Fort, in the middle 

 of it ; then we made some very rough stools and a table out of 

 more of the cart, and put down a floor of pine-logs, each log 

 making one board, as we had no saw a plan I cannot recom- 

 mend, as being on economical principles. 



Then came the chimney. Oh ! that chimney ! I think it took 

 as long to build as the whole house. We would get it up 

 about halfway, and in the morning find that it had fallen down 

 again in the night. There were no stones about and no proper 

 clay, so we had to work grass into the mud to make it stand. 

 We made it across a corner, as being easier to build there, and 

 left a large space for a fire, five feet square, in which we had 

 some splendid ones during the winter. Why it did not take 

 fire I cannot imagine, as we had put in any number of sticks 

 to keep it up, and there was as much grass as mud in its 

 composition. 



We did not make any bunks such as are usual in log cabins, 

 preferring beds on the floor made of the buffalo-skins which we 

 had got during the summer, with our blankets on the top. 



Our next task was to cut a lot of wood for the winter ; and 

 Tom Boot was splendid at this, a seven-pound axe being a mere 

 hatchet in his hands, and we also put up a meat-stage and a 

 small store-house. This done we began to look about us and 

 see what neighbours we had, and found that we had only one 



