4 84 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
([June 4, 1904, 
romriAN TOURIST 
L'Habitat. 
On the highest ridge of one of the rock-ribbed hills of 
old Vermont, against a dark background of thick green 
spruces, stands a small log cabin. Over the slab-covered 
door is nailed a piece of hemlock bark, on the inner sur- 
lace of which, by means of a heated poker, has been 
rudely burned the one Avord "L'Habitat." 
It is a delightful spot, commanding an extended view- 
full of the quiet charm found only among the green hills 
of this old State. Beyond a rough foreground of glacier- 
marked ledges, with here and there a few old trees whose 
tordant branches bear mute witness to the years of 
wrestling with boisterous winds, lies mile upon mile of 
wooded hills and fertile valleys, covered with green 
nieadows, ripening grain fields and straggling orchards. 
Far away to the westward the forest-clad peaks of the 
Green Mountains climb skyward till lost in the haze of 
the distant horizon. 
Back from the cabin a forest of hardwood and spruces 
stretches away over the ridge, gray beeches and silvery 
birches stand out in sharp relief against the dark fir trees. 
From the depths of this wood, the branches of whose 
advance guard touch the cabin roof, comes the muffled 
roll of the drumming grouse by day and the sharp bark 
of the red fox by night. 
The cabin itself is a gem worthy the setting. The walls 
are of spruce logs; its broad, gently sloping roof is 
covered with great slabs of hemlock bark held against 
the attacks of winter winds by rows of flat stones, like 
the roof of a- Swiss chalet. A chimney of rough gray 
stone stands against the eastern end. Around its broad 
base and along the sides of the cabin hardy ferns and 
grasses crowd each other for a footing. The "kindly hand 
of time has gracefully curled the rough bark of the roof 
over the projecting eaves and painted the whole in soft 
tints of gray and brown, making a picture which appeals 
alike to artist and sportsman. 
Within, the walls are hung with trophies of the hunt — 
skins of the deer, wildcat, fox, raccoon, and smaller game. 
The comfortable bunks are covered with blankets in 
rich, warm colors. Beautiful and curious tree growths, 
collected_ in many woodland wanderings, have been 
worked into artistic and serviceable camp furniture. At 
one end a fire-place of generous • proportions warms the 
cabin and serves as a shrine before which the disciples of 
Zoroaster may worship during the long winter evenings. 
And lastly, but by no means of less importance, there is 
a snug, little kitchen, whose perfect equipment would 
make any thrifty housewife green with envy, and where 
things are made to satisfy the most ambitious camp 
appetites. 
Of how it was built and furnished, and something of 
the many delightful days spent there, this is the simple story. 
And if there be somewhere someone who shall read this 
little sketch to the very end and go away and on the 
slope of some grim old mountain, or by the shore of some 
quiet lake, or deep in the woods hy the side of a murmur- 
ing brook, shall build for himself a house of logs^ and 
there, heart to heart with nature, find rest and health and 
pleasure, then shall the writer be content. 
In the single-barreled shotgun days of his youth, a wise 
man presented the boy with a copy of Dott Gordon's 
"Shooting Box," a delightfully fresh, healthy boy's story 
of life in the woods. 
It left the boy with a longing for a camp of his own ; 
he carefully nurtured the idea in secret, and built many 
©astles — or rather log cabins — ^in the air. Several years 
spent in pursuit of an education and a few more in pur- 
suit of coin of the realm, prevented an early realization 
of his dream. 
But the time came, as it has a way of doing ; and being 
a gregarious animal, the boy — now a man — cast about for 
some one to share with him the joys and sorrows of 
camp life. Nothing in the world — with the possible ex- 
ception of matrimony — so severely tests the qualities of a 
man as life in camp, and a partner in such an enterprise 
must be a man who will not shy at the wood-pile or ex- 
hibit signs , of heart failure at the niere mention of 
washing dishes. 
Being blessed with a friend of the right sort, who fell 
in with the scheme with an enthusiasm as great as the 
writer's, we two, on November i, 1899, chose a location 
for our camp on the sumit of a high, rocky ridge. The 
face of this ridge is bare, and commands one of the most 
beautiful views imaginable. Back of the cabin is an ex- 
tended wood, a favorite retreat for small game. 
For a small annual rental we leased a site for our 
cabin, "with all the rights necessary for a reasonable 
enjoyment of the same." 
A few days later the axes began to ring among the 
spruces back in the woods. Straight trees ten inches at 
the butt were cut and hauled to the proposed site. Five 
of these, twenty-four feet long, were first laid five feet 
apart for sills. On these were raised the cabin walls. 
The end logs were cut fourteen feet long, and those for 
the sides twenty-four feet, and laid up in the regular cob- 
house fashion to a height of eight feet. The space thus 
inclosed measured ten feet by twenty feet. Openings for 
doors and windows were sawed out of the solid walls ; 
pieces of two-inch by four-inch hemlock spiked to the 
sawed ends of the logs served as casings and prevented 
the solidity of the walls being impaired. 
For rafters we ' cut ten small spruces five inches in 
diameter; they meet at the ridge-pole eighteen inches 
higher than the side walls, beyond which they extend 
seven feet on either side, their ends resting on a log 
running the length of the cabin, which is in turn sup- 
ported by four upright piazza posts. 
A roof of rough hemlock slopes gently from the ridge- 
pole to the outer edge. Over these boards was laid heavy 
builders' paper well lapped and fastened with wooden 
strips. Two coats of paint made our roof ready to receive 
its covering of hemlock bark. This was not put on until 
the following June, at which time the great trees peel 
readily. Nearly a cord of this bark, in the largest slabs 
we could get, was shingled on and flat stones as large as 
a man could handle were laid over the bark to keep it 
irom huffing up or being carried away by the wind. 
A double floor of hemlock boards with an interlining of 
heavy builders' paper was nailed to the five log sills. 
Low base-boards, tightly fitted around all sides, made a 
solid, warm floor. A trap-door at one end gives access 
to the hole we call a cellar. The windows are hinged 
at the sides, swing inward, and are fastened with oak 
buttons and equipped with natural curved wood handles. 
The doors were hung with heavy, old-fashioned hand- 
wrought hinges, with "the loving marks of the hammer 
slill upon them." The outside of these doors we covered 
with straight-edge hemlock slabs nailed on at an angle 
C'l forty-five degrees, and the cracks between them 
chinked with gray moss. Handles of natural curved wood 
were cut in the forest, and sliding bars of white oak 
fasten these doors securely. 
The laying of the two piazza floors, and the making 
cf heavy wooden shutters to protect the windows during 
our absence, completed the heavy woodwork. 
The important work of chinking the cracks between the 
logs now occupied our attention. For inside we used a 
hundred pounds of coarse burlap cut into strips and 
tightly driven into the crevices. For the outside we used' 
the long, damp swamp moss. When it was finished, the 
effect was beautiful. But alas ! the following summer the 
iogs dried and shrunk, the moss dried and fell out or blew 
away, and we saw, much to our chagrin, that we had 
all our work to do over again. 
It had been a tremendous task, this chinking, and we 
determined to make it permanent this time. We made a 
mixture of mortar and cement, to which was added 
enough lamp-black to give it the color of blue clay, and 
tearing out the remaining moss and burlap, we re- 
chinked the whole, inside and out. The result was eii- 
tii-ely satisfactory; it looked well and the cabin was 
■warmer than ever before. 
If one is in no hurry it would be a good plan to cut 
the logs during the winter, build the walls and put on the 
roof, and let the whole thing stand through the following 
summer. The sun and wind would pretty thoroughly dry 
the logs, and the chinking could be done in the late 
autumn with a fair chance of the work being permanent. 
Or the top and bottom of the logs could be hewn flat and 
laid in mortar. 
In July of the first summer, on visiting the cabin after 
a ten days' absence, we found a species of small "borers" 
were working the logs. A hole the size of the lead of a 
pencil on the lower side of the logs would have below it a 
pile of fine "sawdust" from one to two inches high. 
Hundreds of these were all over the logs, inside and out, 
and the floor along the sides of the room was literally 
covered with the result of their borings. 
They must have had day and night shifts, for they were 
never idle. Any loud noise would cause an immediate 
cessation of work, but at night, or during the day when 
all was quiet, the sound of these insect miners could be 
plainly heard. According to the log book, their operations 
extended over a period of four months. 
We began to fear that the logs would be honeycombed, 
and that some day the whole thing would crumble to dust 
at our touch. Our fears were allayed by several old 
woodsmen, who informed us that during the first summer, 
when logs are drying, the sap turns sour, and it is then 
that these borers work the wood immediately beneath 
the bark. 
Of the looks of our unwelcome guests we remain 
entirely ignorant, for although we searched all we could 
without disfiguring the logs, we never found one. 
Peeling the logs would evade the attack of these 
borers, but the rustic beauty of the cabin would be lost. 
To return to our building. On each side of the room at 
one end we built double bunks. An old coil spring bed 
cut in two in the middle and excelsior-stuffed mattresses 
made really comfortable beds. It would hav£ been more 
in keeping with the spirit of the place to have stuflFed 
these mattresses with the scorned but withal most excel- 
lent corn husk — the curled hair of our forefathers. 
The two top bunks did not prove to be popular; it 
required all the agility of a Rocky Mountain bighorn to 
get into one of the things, so we removed them, much 
improving the appearance of the room. Cot beds which 
fold and slide under the lower bunks proved a most 
satisfactory substitute. 
We bought a small kitchen range, a supply of tinware 
and cooking utensils, and moved in. The range was set 
up at the end of the room opposite the bunks, and the 
tinware was hung in solemn rows upon the wall. 
Our entire attention was now devoted to the making of 
camp furniture. Straight young birches were cut and 
hauled to camp and fashioned into a couch. It was a 
work of art when finished, and although it required 
several strong men to move it, has since dried out and is 
not so heavy. Provided with a mattress and covered with 
plenty of blankets, this couch serves as an extra bunk 
upon' occasion. 
A round table was our next essay. The top we made 
01 oak burned black with a piece of round iron patiently 
heated and reheated in the fire. The base was found 
growing m the woods, after much search. It is a yellow 
birch whose gnarled and twisted roots spread out to 
form a firm support. When it was finished we sat down, 
filled our pipes, and admired our handiwork. It was 
very 'Roycroftie." A hammock chair of deer skin with 
natural wood frame, a stool made from odd growths, and 
two ancient, curved-backed chairs bought at a country 
auction, completed the furniture. 
Our energies were next bent toward the less important 
but still more interesting work of decoration. As in the 
building of the cabin, and the construction of the furni- 
ture, the materials at hand were made to serve as far as 
possible. A strangely twisted lever-wood root from the 
swamp made a suitable mount for the thermometer. A 
beautiful moss-covered pine knot with base flattened and 
rotted center removed made a gem of a match safe. Gun 
racks of deer's feet, pipe racks made with the talons of 
the red-tailed hawk— all kinds of useful and beautiful 
things appeared as the result of the long winter evenings. 
The broad, shelf-like mushrooms collected from decay- 
ing stumps and logs began to form a frieze around the 
walls. 
Skins and horns, fur and feathers, all told of luck or 
prowess with the rifle. 
The inside of the two doors we covered with birch bark. 
The brush, the pen and the camera have contributed 
choice things for the adornment of the interior. The 
platinum point has also been brought into service, and 
the soft brown tones of the burnt wood are in perfect 
harmony with the place. The woodwork of the bunks 
ofi'ered an especially attractive field for the work, and are 
covered with bits of woodland scenes, and birds and 
beasts from field and wood. 
The roof inside presented a painfully new appearance, 
and although we smoked enough to enable the Tobacco 
Trust to declare an extra dividend, it failed to have any 
appreciable effect on the rough boards. We determined 
to hasten the natural course of things, and put on a coat 
of lamp-black and turpentine, which gave a sufficiently 
smoky efi^ect to suit our taste. 
Spring saw us at work on an addition. On the back 
side of the cabin, as on the front, we had a wide piazza. 
A part of this twelve feet long was inclosed, and the out- 
.side covered with hemlock slabs, whose reddish-brov/n 
matches the rough bark of the logs. Here we set up our 
stove, built a sink, shelves, and a generous cupboard. 
The appointments of this little kitchen are complete, and 
it is with pardonable pride that we show it to occasional 
petticoated visitors. The remaining eight feet of the 
back piazza makes a dry shed for our season's supply of 
fire-wood. 
We now turned with enthusiasm to the building of our 
chimney. It was easy to find the stones — this is a Ver- 
mont crop that never fails— and although her hardy sons 
have been digging them out of the soil for years, I 
could never see that the supply m.aterially diminished. 
For the fire-place we sawed an opening through the 
logs at the end of the room opposite our bunks, five feet 
wide and four feet high. The chimney is of native gray 
slone laid in cement, and stands wholly outside. The base, 
six feet wide and three feet thick, rises to, a height of 
five feet, tapers to three feet, and ends in a low, round 
lop above the ridge. The back and sides of the fire-place 
and the flue we lined with common brick. The hearth- 
stones are of flat slate rock laid in cement. On each side 
of the opening are columns of white quartz from a vein 
in the ledges. The broad mantel is of blackened oak, 
supported by rustic brackets. A pair of andirons, mar- 
velously wrought — the gift of the maker — completed the: 
work. 
And of all things we love this fire-place best. The 
hunter, returning at the close of the long winter day, ' 
may be cold and hungry and empty-handed, but under the 
influence of the cheerful blaze his heart melts with the 
snow on his moccasins, fatigue and disappointment are 
forgotten, and an ineffable sense of bodily comfort steals 
over him. 
There had been some doubt as to whether this fire- 
place would warm the cabin in the coldest weather, but it 
works like a charm. Indeed, by building a rousing fire 
and closing all tight, we can put a Turkish bath to shame. 
We have tried a variety of coverings for the beds, in- 
cluding sleeping bags of different kinds, but find nothing 
sc comfortable and hygienic as the best grade of heavy . 
woolen blankets. We bought them in bright colors and 
spread over the bunks, and they give a warm and cheer- 
ful appearance to the room. 
Each spring and fall we have devoted some time to the 
surroundings— filling, leveling, and sodding over hollows, 
planting fern roots along the sides of the cabin, and clear- 
ing away dead branches and decaying logs, but being care- , 
ful not to mar the natural beauties of the place. 
The elevated location of our camp made serious the 
