154 
LETTERS FROM ALABAMA. 
two feet wide, which a shutter professes to close^ 
hut as it is made of hoards that have never felt 
either saw or plane, being merely riven hy the aid 
of the hroad-axe out of an oak log, you may guess 
how accurately it fits. A door formed of similar 
hoards, rarely shut, at least from dawn till night, 
gives light and air to each room, though the crevices 
of the logs, and those of the roof, would afford 
ample light when hoth door and shutter were closed. 
You will perhaps wonder how a door can possibly 
he made of hoards whose edges have never been 
made straight by the plane ; the fact is, the hoards 
are not laid edge to edge, hut the edges lap over 
each other, as hoard«-fences are sometimes made in 
England ; to speak scientifically, the hoards are 
laterally imbricated. 
A bed-room has been added since the original 
erection ; unharked poles were set in the ground, 
and these riven hoards nailed outside, edge over 
edge, by the way of clapboard ; there is nothing of 
lathing, or boarding, or papering within, nothing 
between the lodger and the weather, hut these 
rough, crooked, and uneven hoards, through which, 
of course, the sun plays at hopeep, and the wind 
and rain also. It forms a lean-to, the roof being 
continued from that of the house. The lowest 
tier of logs composing the house, rest on stout 
blocks about two feet from the ground ; beams go 
across from these logs, on which the floor is laid ; 
the planks are certainly sawed, but they are not 
pinned to the beams, being moveable at pleasure; 
and as the distance between the lowest logs and 
the ground is perfectly open, the wind has full 
liberty of ingress through the seams of the floor, 
as well as in every other part. 
