THE USES OF WOOD 



475 



act as a preservative against decay. Early voyageurs 

 and trappers about the sources of the Mississippi and 

 northward in Canada floored and roofed their camps with 

 basswood bark when they could get it, and, as related in 

 the interesting journals of Alexander Henry, they often 

 put themselves to much 

 trouble to get this bark. 



Man was pretty well ad- 

 vanced in the use of tools 

 before he was able to split 

 tree trunks into boards and 

 use them for roofing pur- 

 poses. The lowest savage 

 could break boughs for 

 thatch ; and only a little 

 more skill was needed for 

 stripping bark ; but the step 

 was rather long which 

 placed primitive man in a 

 position for working wood 

 into flat boards for roofing 

 his hut. Little of that 

 work was being done by the 

 aboriginal Americans at the 

 time of the discovery, al- 

 though they knew how to 

 rive northern white cedar, 

 or arborvitae, and make 

 ribs and braces of it to 

 strengthen their bark ca- 

 noes. They did this more 

 by beating the wood with stones than by riving it with 

 wedges ; but the splitting was made possible by the wood's 

 peculiar texture which caused it to part along the rings of 

 annual growth. Splitting boards for roofs was a much 

 more difficult 

 task and was 

 practically be- 

 yond the Indi- 

 an's ability. 



The cl ap- 

 board for roof- 

 ing was the 

 white man's in- 

 vention. No 

 savage gave 

 him any hints 

 along that line, 

 and that was 

 one of the 

 things which the 

 frontiersman 

 did not learn 

 from the na- 

 tives whom he 

 dispossessed of 

 their forest 

 heritage. Such 

 boards have 



SHINGLE ROOF ,J l02 YEARS OLD 



The roof on the central part of this barn was of white pine shingles, 

 fastened with home-made nails, and served more than a century, when 

 snow broke it down. The_ walls still stand on Bethel Farm, near Parsons, 

 West Virginia. The nails were made by a negro slave named Titus 

 Walker. 



ORNAMENTAL AS WELL AS USEFUL 



The architect who has a predilection for geometrical figures, can produce pleasing combinations with 

 roofs and walls by working them into artistic patterns and color schemes. The modi 

 in the accompanying cut T a good example. It stands at Riverdale, on-the-Hud 



southern pine and roofed with cedar shingles. 



been of different sizes and sorts, some sawed, some split, 

 one kind thicker on one edge than on the other. The 

 oldest kind in America was split from bolts with maul, 

 mallet, wedges, and froe, before mills sawed such boards. 

 The clapboard was about three feet long, from five to 



ten inches wide, and half 

 an inch or more in thick- 

 ness. 



Such clapboards might be 

 spoken of in the present 

 tense as well as in the past, 

 for they are with us yet; 

 but it is now so much more 

 convenient to make them by 

 machinery than to work 

 them out with wedges, mal- 

 lets, mauls, and froes, that 

 the handmade article is not 

 often produced now, at 

 least in the larger size. 

 The split clapboards of the 

 pioneers exist in large num- 

 bers yet on old buildings 

 which have stood many 

 years. Roofs of that kind 

 are still to be seen in 

 mountainous districts, par- 

 ticularly among the Appa- 

 lachian ranges, though that 

 peculiar style of roofs in 

 which the boards are held 

 in place by logs or poles laid upon them, is becoming 

 scarce, even on old buildings coming down from a long 

 time ago. Few have been made in the past fifty years, 

 and decay, fire, and other misfortunes have spared few 



of these relics. 

 It is a style of 

 roof that will 

 not be much 

 missed, for it 

 does not belong 

 to our day and 

 generation, but 

 rather to the 

 Daniel Boone 

 state of cul- 

 ture. Modern 

 roofs are bet- 

 ter. 



The split 

 c 1 a p b o a rds 

 were made of 

 sundry woods. 

 Each region 

 used the best 

 it had. Oak 

 was a favorite 

 where it was 

 procurable. It 



ern residence shown 

 son, and is built of 



