A house of green growing sod and the Colorado River adobe.A house of green growing sod and the Colorado River adobe.
Fig. 50shows how the double walls are made with a space of at least a foot between them; these walls are covered with wire netting or chicken-coop wire, as shown inFig. 53, and the space between the walls filled in with mud or dirt of any kind. The framework may be made of milled lumber, as inFig. 50, or it may be made of saplings cut on the river bank and squared at their ends, as shown by detailed drawings between Figs.50and52. The roof may be made flat, like Figs.54and56, and covered with poles, as inFig. 54, in which case the sod will have to be held in place by pegging other poles along the eaves as shown in the left-hand corner ofFig. 54.This will keep the sod from sliding off the roof. Or you may build a roof after the manner illustrated byFig. 49and Fig.51, that is, if you want to make a neat, workmanlike house; but any of the ways shown byFig. 52will answer for the framework of the roof. The steep roof, however, must necessarily be either shingled or thatched or the sod held in place by a covering of wire netting. If you are building this for your lawn, set green, growing sod up edgewise against the wire netting, after the latter has been tacked to your frame, so arranging the sod that the green grass will face the outside. If you wish to plaster the inside of your house with cement or concrete, fill in behind with mud, plaster the mud against the sod and put gravel and stones against the mud so that it will be next to the wire netting on the inside of the house over which you plaster the concrete. If you make the roof shown inFig. 54, cover it first with hay and then dirt and sod and hold the sod down with wire netting neatly tacked over it, or cover it with gravel held in place by wire netting and spread concrete over the top as one does on a cellar floor. If the walls are kept sprinkled by the help of the garden hose, the grass will keep as green as that on your lawn, and if you have a dirt roof you may allow purple asters and goldenrod to grow upon it (Fig. 62) or plant it with garden flowers.
If you are going to make a thatched roof, soak your thatch in water and straighten the bent straws; build the roof steep like the one shown inFig. 57and make a wooden needle a foot long and pointed at both ends as shown inFig. 59; tie your thatching twine to the middle of the needle, then take your rye or wheat straw, hay, or bulrushes, gather it into bundles four inches thick and one foot wide, like those shown inFig. 60, and lay them along next to the eaves of your house as inFig. 58.Sew them in place by running the needle up through the wire netting to the man on the outside who in turn pushes it back to the man on the inside. Make a knot at each wisp of the thatch until one layer is finished, let the lower ends overhang the eaves, then proceed as illustrated byFig. 66and described under the heading of the bog ken.
If in place of a simple ornament you want to make a real house of it and a pretty one at that, fill up the space between the walls with mud and plaster it on the outside with cement or concrete and you will have a cheap concrete house. The wire netting will hold the plaster or the concrete and consequently it is not necessary to make the covering of cement as thick as in ordinary buildings, for after the mud is dried upon the inside it will, with its crust of cement or plaster, be practically as good as a solid concrete wall.
Fig. 57.Fig. 58.Fig. 59.Fig. 60.Fig. 61.Fig. 62.
Ornamental sod house for the lawn.Ornamental sod house for the lawn.
Formany reasons it is sometimes necessary or advisable to have one's camp on stilts, so to speak. Especially is this true in the more tropical countries where noxious serpents and insects abound. A simple form of stilted shack is shown byFig. 63.To build this shack we must first erect an elevated platform (Fig. 64). This is made by setting four forked sticks of equal height in the ground and any height from the ground to suit the ideas of the camp builder. If, for some reason, the uprights are "wabbly" the frame may be stiffened by lashing diagonal cross sticks to the frame. After you have erected the four uprights, lay two poles through the crotches, as inFig. 64, and make a platform by placing other poles across these, after which a shelter may be made in the form of an open Adirondack camp or any of the forms previously described.Fig. 65shows the framework for the open camp of Adirondack style with the uprights lashed to the side bars; if you have nails, of course, you can nail these together, but these plans are made on the assumption that you have no nails for that purpose, which will probably be true if you have been long in the woods.
Fig. 63.Fig. 64.Fig. 65.
A simple stilt camp.A simple stilt camp.
Kenis a name now almost obsolete but the bog ken is a house built on stilts where the ground is marshy, damp, and unfit to sleep upon. As you will see by the diagram (Fig. 66), the house is built upon a platform similar to the one last described; in this instance, however, the shelter itself is formed by a series of arches similar to the Iroquois (Fig. 41). The uprights on the two sides have their ends bent over and lashed together, forming arches for the roof. Over the arches are lashed horizontal poles the same as those described in the construction of the Iroquois lodge.Fig. 67shows one way to prevent "varmints" of any kind from scaling the supporting poles and creeping into your camp.
The protection consists of a tin pan with a hole in the bottom slid over the supporting poles.Fig. 66shows how to lash the thatching on to the poles andFig. 68shows how to spring the sticks in place for a railing around your front porch or balcony.
The floor to this bog ken is a little more elaborate than that of the last described camp because the poles have all been halved before laying them for the floor. These are supposed to be afterwards covered with browse, hay, or rushes and the roof shingled with bark or thatched.
Soak your straw or hay well in water and smooth it out flat and regular. The steeper the roofs the longer the thatch will last. In this bog ken our roof happens to be a rounded one, an arched roof; but it is sheltering a temporary house and the thatch will last as long as the shack. While the real pioneer uses whatever material he finds at hand, it does no harm for him to know that to make a really good thatch one should use only straw which is fully ripe and has been thrashed clean with an old-fashioned flail. The straw must be clear of all seed or grain and kept straight, not mussed up, crumpled, and broken. If any grain is left in the straw it will attract field-mice, birds, domestic mice and rats, domestic turkeys and chickens, and these creatures in burrowing and scratching for food will play havoc with the roof.
Fig. 66.Fig. 67.Fig. 68.Fig. 69.
Details of bog ken.Details of bog ken.
It is not necessary to have straight and even rafters, because the humps, bumps, and hollows caused by crooked sticks are concealed by the mattress of straw. Take a bundle of thatch in your hands, squeeze it together, and place it so that the butt ends project about three inches beyond the floor (A,Fig. 66); tie the thatch closely to the lower rafter and the one next above it, using for the purpose twine, marlin, raffia, or well-twisted white hickory bark. This first row should be thus tied near both ends to prevent the wind from getting under it and lifting it up. Next put on another row of wisps of thatch over the first and the butt ends come even with the first, but tie this one to the third row of rafters not shown in diagram. The butts of the third row of thatch (B, Fig.66) should be about nine inches up on the front rows; put this on as before and proceed the same way withC,D,E, andF,Fig. 66, until the roof is completed. The thatch should be ten or twelve inches thick for a permanent hut but need not be so for a temporary shed.
As there is no comb to this roof the top must be protected where the thatches from each side join, and to do this fasten a thatch over the top and bind it on both sides but not in the middle, so that it covers the meeting of the thatches on both sides of the shack; this top piece should be stitched or bound on with wire if you have it, or fastened with willow withe or even wisps of straw if you are an expert. A house, twenty by thirty feet, made of material found on the place and thatched with straw costs the builder only fifty cents for nails and four days' work for two persons. A good thatched roof will last as long as a modern shingle roof, for in olden days when shingles were good and split out of blocks, not sawed, and were well seasoned before using, they were not expected to last much over fifteen years; a well-made thatched roof will last fifteen or twenty years.
Fig. 70.
Snow-shoe foundation for bog ken.Snow-shoe foundation for bog ken.
But a real bog ken is one that is built over boggy or marshy places too soft to support an ordinary structure. To overcome this difficulty required considerable study and experiment, but at length the author hit upon a simple plan which has proved effective. If you wish to build a duck hunter's camp on the soft meadows, or for any other reason you desire a camp on treacherous, boggy ground, you may build one by first making a thick mattress of twigs and sticks as shown byFig. 70.This mattress acts on the principle of a snow-shoe and prevents your house from sinking by distributing the weight equally over a wide surface. The mattress should be carefully made of sticks having their branches trimmed off sufficiently to allow them to lie in regular courses as in the diagram. The first course should be laid one way and the next course at right angles to the first, and so on, until the mattress is sufficiently thick for the purpose.
Standing on the mattress, it will be an easy matter with your hands to force the sharpened ends of your upright postsA,B,C, andDdown into the yielding mud, but be careful not to push them too far because in some of these marshes the mud is practically bottomless. It is only necessary for the supports to sink in the mud far enough to make them stand upright.
Fig. 71.
Framework of simple bog ken.Framework of simple bog ken.
The next step is to lay, at right angles to the top layer of brush, a series of rods or poles between your uprights as shown inFig. 70; then take two more poles, place them at right angles to the last ones, and press them down until they fit snugly on top of the other poles, and there nail them fast to the uprights as shown inFig. 70, after which to further bind them you may nail a diagonal fromAtoDandBtoC, but this may not be necessary.
When you have proceeded thus far you may erect a framework like that shown inFig. 71, and build a platform by flooring the crosspieces or horizontal bars with halves of small logs,Fig. 71.
It is now a simple matter to erect a shack which may be roofed with bark as inFig. 72or thatched as inFig. 74.Fig. 72shows the unfinished shack in order that its construction may be easily seen; this one is being roofed with birch bark. A fireplace may be made by enclosing a bed of mud (Fig. 73) between or inside of the square formed by four logs. On this clay or mud you can build your camp-fire or cooking fire or mosquito smudge with little or no danger of setting fire to your house.
The mosquito smudge will not be found necessary if there is any breeze blowing at all, because these insects cling to the salt hay or bog-grass and do not rise above it except in close, muggy weather where no breeze disturbs them. I have slept a few feet over bog meadows without being disturbed by mosquitoes when every blade of grass on the meadows was black with these insects, but there was a breeze blowing which kept the mosquitoes at home.
Fig. 72.Fig. 73.Fig. 74.
Adaptation of a bark shack to the bog ken foundation.Adaptation of a bark shack to the bog ken foundation.
Nowthat we know how to camp on solid ground and on the quaking bog we cannot finish up the subject of stilt camps without including one over-water camp. If the water has a muddy bottom it is a simple matter to force your supporting posts into the mud; this may be done by driving them in with a wooden mallet made of a section of log or it may be done by fastening poles on each side of the post and having a crowd of men jump up and down on the poles until the posts are forced into the bottom.
If you are building a pretentious structure the piles may be driven with the ordinary pile-driver. But if your camp on the water is over a hard bottom of rock or sand through which you cannot force your supports you may take a lot of old barrels (Fig. 75), knock the tops and bottoms out of them, nail some cross planks on the ends of your spiles, slide the barrels over the spiles, then set them in place in the water and hold them there by filling the barrels with rocks, stones, or coarse gravel.Fig. 77shows a foundation made in this manner; this method is also useful in building piers (Fig. 78). But if you are in the woods, out of reach of barrels or other civilized lumber, you can make yourself cribs by driving a square or a circle of sticks in the ground a short distance and then twining roots or pliable branches inside and outside the stakes, basket fashion, as shown inFig. 76.When the crib is complete it may be carefully removed from the ground and used as the barrels were used by filling them with stones to support the uprights.Fig. 79shows an ordinary portable house such as are advertised in all the sportsmen's papers, which has been erected upon a platform over the water.
Fig. 75.Fig. 76.Fig. 77.Fig. 78.Fig. 79.
Showing how to make foundations for over-water camps.Showing how to make foundations for over-water camps.
My experience with this sort of work leads me to advise the use of piles upon which to build in place of piers of stones. Where I have used such piers upon small inland lakes the tremendous push of the freezing ice has upset them, whereas the ice seems to slide around the piles without pushing them over. The real danger with piles lies in the fact that if the water rises after the ice has frozen around the uprights the water will lift the ice up and the ice will sometimes pull the piles out of the bottom like a dentist pulls teeth. Nevertheless, piles are much better for a foundation for a camp or pier than any crib of rocks, and that is the reason I have shown the cribs in Figs.75and77, made so as to rest upon the bottom supposedly below the level of the winter ice.
Ifmy present reader happens to be a Boy Scout or a scout-master who wants the scouts to build a tower for exhibition purposes, he can do so by following the directions here given, but if there is real necessity for haste in the erection of this tower, of course we cannot build one as tall as we might where we have more time. With a small tower all the joints may be quickly lashed together with strong, heavy twine, rope, or even wire; and in the wilderness it will probably be necessary to bind the joints with pliable roots, or cordage made of bark or withes; but as this is not a book on woodcraft we will suppose that the reader has secured the proper material for fastening the joints of the frame of this signal-tower and he must now shoulder his axe and go to the woods in order to secure the necessary timber. First let him cut eight straight poles—that is, as straight as he can find them. These poles should be about four and one half inches in diameter at their base and sixteen and one half feet long. After all the branches are trimmed off the poles, cut four more sticks each nine feet long and two and a half or three inches in diameter at the base; when these are trimmed into shape one will need twenty six or seven more stout sticks each four and one half feet long for braces and for flooring for the platform.
It being supposed that your timber is now all in readiness at the spot where you are to erect the tower, begin by laying out on the ground what we call the "kite frame." First take three of the four-and-one-half-foot sticks,A,B,C(Fig. 82), and two of the nine-foot sticksDandE(Fig. 82), and, placing them on a level stretch of ground, arrange them in the form of a parallelogram. PutAfor the top rail at the top of the parallelogram andCfor the bottom of the parallelogram and let them rest upon the sidesDandE, but putBunder the sidesDandE. In order to bind these together securely, the ends of all the sticks must be allowed to project a few inches.Bshould be far enough belowAto give the proper height for a railing around the platform. The platform itself rests uponB.Aforms the top railing to the fence around it.
Now take two of your sixteen-and-one-half-foot poles and place them diagonally from corner to corner of the parallelogram with the small ends of the poles lying over the ends ofAand the butt ends of the poles extending beyondC, as inFig. 82.Lash these poles securely in place.
Where the poles cross each other in theX, or centre, it is best to flatten them some by scoring and hewing with a hatchet, but care must be taken not to weaken them by scoring too deep. Next take your lash rope, double it, run the loop down under the cross sticks, bring it up on the other side, as inFig. 83, then pull the two loose ends through the loop. When they are drawn taut (Fig. 84), bend them round in opposite directions—that is, bend the right-hand end of the rope to the right, down and under the cross sticks, pull it out to the left, as inFig. 84, then bend the left-hand piece of rope to the left, down and under, pulling it out to the right, as inFig. 84.Next bring those two pieces up over and tie them together in a square knot, as shown in Figs.85and86.
Fig. 80.Fig. 81.Fig. 82.Fig. 83.Fig. 84.Fig. 85.Fig. 86.Fig. 87.
Parts of tower for a wireless, a game lookout, an elevated camp or cache.Parts of tower for a wireless, a game lookout, an elevated camp or cache.
Make a duplicate "kite" frame for the other side exactly as you made the first one, and then arrange these two pieces on the ground with the cross sticksFandFon the under-side and with their butt ends opposite the butts of the similar poles on the other frame and about five feet apart. Fasten a long line to the point where the twoFpieces cross each other and detail a couple of scouts to hold each of the butt ends from slipping by placing one of their feet against the butt, as inFig. 82, while two gangs of men or boys pull on the ropes and raise the kite frames to the positions shown in Figs.81and88.
Be careful, when raising the frames, not to pull them too far so that they may fall on some unwary workman. When the frames are once erected it is an easy matter to hold them in place by guy-ropes fastened to stones, stakes, or trees or held by men or boys, while some of the shorter braces are fastened to hold the two kite frames together, as inFig. 90, wherein you may see these short braces at the top and bottom. Next, the two other long sticks, legs, or braces (G,G, Figs.89and90) should be held temporarily in position and the place marked where they cross each other in the centre of the parallelogram which should be the same as it is on the legs of the two kite frames. TheGsticks should now be lashed together at the crossing point, as already described and shown by Figs.83,84,85, and86, when they may be put up against the sides, as inFig. 89, in which diagram theGpoles are made very dark and the kite frames indicated very lightly so as to better show their relative positions. Lash theGpoles at the top and at the other points where they cross the other braces and secure the framework by adding short braces, as indicated inFig. 90.
Fig. 88.Fig. 89.Fig. 90.Fig. 90..
Details of scout signal-tower or game lookout.Details of scout signal-tower or game lookout.
If all the parts are bound together with wire it will hold them more securely than nails, with no danger of the poles splitting. A permanent tower of this kind may be erected on which a camp may be built, as shown inFig. 87.It may be well to note that in the last diagram the tower is only indicated by a few lines of the frame in order to simplify it and prevent confusion caused by the multiplicity of poles.
If you desire to make a tower taller than the one described it would be best, perhaps, to take the regular Boy-Scout dimensions as given by Scout-master A. G. Clarke:
"Eight pieces 22 feet long, about 5 or 6 inches thick at the base; 4 pieces 6 feet long, about 3 or 4 inches thick at the base; 12 pieces 6 feet long, about 2½ or 3 inches thick at base; 12 or 15 pieces for braces and platform about 6 feet long."
When putting together this frame it may be nailed or spiked, but care must be used not to split the timber where it is nailed. With most wood this may be avoided by driving the spikes or nails several inches back of the ends of the sticks. To erect a flagpole or a wireless pole, cut the bottom of the pole wedge-shaped, fit in the space between the cross poles, as inFig. 90A, then lash it fast to theBandApole, and, to further secure it, two other sticks may be nailed to theFpoles, one on each side, between which the bottom of the flagpole is thrust, as shown byFig. 90A.
The flooring of the platform must be securely nailed or lashed in place, otherwise there may be some serious accident caused by the boys or men falling through, a fall of about twenty and one half feet according to the last measurements given for the frame.
An observatory of this kind will add greatly to the interest of a mountain home or seaside home; it is a practical tower for military men to be used in flag signalling and for improvised wireless; it is also a practical tower for a lookout in the game fields and a delight to the Boy Scouts.
Bythe natural process of evolution we have now arrived at the tree-top house. It is interesting to the writer to see the popularity of this style of an outdoor building, for, while he cannot lay claim to originating it, he was the first to publish the working drawings of a tree-house. These plans first appeared inHarper's Round Table; afterward he made others for theLadies' Home Journaland later published them in "The Jack of All Trades."
Having occasion to travel across the continent shortly after the first plans were published, he was amused to see all along the route, here and there in back-yard fruit-trees, shade-trees, and in forest-trees, queer little shanties built by the boys, high up among the boughs.
In order to build a house one must make one's plansto fit the tree. If it is to be a one-tree house, spike on the trunk two quartered pieces of small log one on each side of the trunk (Figs.91and92). Across these lay a couple of poles and nail them to the trunk of the tree (Fig. 91); then at right angles to these lay another pair of poles, as shown in the right-hand diagram (Fig. 91). Nail these securely in place and support the ends of the four poles by braces nailed to the trunk of the tree below. The four cross-sills will then (Fig. 95) serve as a foundation upon which to begin your work. Other joists can now be laid across these first and supported by braces running diagonally down to the trunk of the tree, as shown inFig. 95.After the floor is laid over the joist any form of shack, from a rude, open shed to a picturesque thatch-roofed cottage, may be erected upon it. It is well to support the two middle rafters of your roof by quartered pieces of logs, as the middle rafters are supported inFig. 95; by quartered logs shown inFig. 92.
Fig. 91.Fig. 92.Fig. 93.Fig. 94.Fig. 95.Fig. 96.Fig. 97.
Details of tree-top houses.Details of tree-top houses.
If the house is a two-tree house, run your cross-sill sticks from trunk to trunk, as inFig. 94; then make two T-braces, like the one inFig. 94A, of two-inch planks with braces secured by iron straps, or use heavier timber, and bolt the parts together securely (Fig. 93), or use logs and poles (Fig. 94), after which hang these T's over the ends of your two cross sticks, as inFig. 94, and spike the uprights of the T's securely to the tree trunks. On top of the T you can rest a two-by-four and support the end by diagonals nailed to the tree trunk (Fig. 94) after the manner of the diagonals inFig. 95.You will note inFig. 95that cleats or blocks are spiked to the tree below the end of the diagonals in order to further secure them. It is sometimes necessary in a two-tree house to allow for the movement of the tree trunks. In Florida a gentleman did this by building his tree-house on theBsills (Fig. 94) and making them movable to allow for the play of the tree trunks.Fig. 96shows a two-tree house andFig. 97shows a thatch-roofed cottage built among the top branches of a single tree.
It goes without saying that in a high wind one does not want to stay long in a tree-top house; in fact, during some winds that I have experienced I would have felt much safer had I been in a cyclone cellar; but if the braces of a tree-house are securely made and the trees selected have good, heavy trunks, your tree-top house will stand all the ordinary summer blows and winter storms. One must remember that even one's own home is not secure enough to stand some of those extraordinary gales,tornadoes, and hurricanes which occasionally visit parts of our country.
Since I published the first plans of a tree-top house many people have adopted the idea and built quite expensive structures in the boughs of the trees. Probably all these buildings are intact at the present writing.
The boys at Lynn, Mass., built a very substantial house in the trees, and the truant officer claimed that the lads hid away there so that they could play "hookey" from school; but if this is true, and there seems to be some doubt about it, it must be remembered that the fault was probably withthe schoolsand not the boys, for boys who have ingenuity and grit enough to build a substantial house in a tree cannot be bad boys; industry, skill, and laborious work are not the attributes of the bad boy.
Some New York City boys built a house in the trees at One Hundred and Sixty-ninth Street, but here the police interfered, claiming that it was against a city ordinance to build houses in shade-trees, and maybe it is; but, fortunately for the boys, there are other trees which may be used for this purpose. There is now, or was recently, an interesting tree-house on Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn; a house so commodious that it was capable of accommodating as many as fifteen people; but it was not as pretty and attractive a tree-house as the one located at the foot of Mount Tamalpais, in Mill Valley, San Francisco, which is built after the plan shown byFig. 95. This California house is attached to the trunk of a big redwood tree and is reached by a picturesque bridge spanning a rocky canyon.
Tree-houses are also used as health resorts, and recently there was a gentleman of Plainfield, Mass., living in a tree-house because he found the pure air among the leaves beneficial; while down in Ecuador another man, who feared malarial mosquitoes and objected to wild beastsand snakes, built himself a house on top of an ibo-tree, seventy feet from the ground. This is quite a pretentious structure and completely hides and covers the top of the tree. It is located on the banks of the Escondido River; and in this tropical country, while it may be a safe retreat from the pests enumerated, it might not be so safe from lightning in one of those violent tropical storms. But it is probably as safe as any house in that country, for one must take chances no matter what kind of a house one dwells in.
Primitive and savage men all over the world for thousands of years have built dwellings in tree tops. In the Philippines many natives live in tree-top houses. The Kinnikars, hill-tribesmen of Travancore, India, are said to live in houses built in the trees, but in New Guinea it seems that such houses are only provided for the girls, and every night the dusky lassies are sent to bed in shacks perched in the tree tops; then, to make safety doubly safe, the watchful parents take away the ladders and their daughters cannot reach the ground until the ladders are replaced in the morning.
The most important thing about all this is that a tree-house is always a source of delight to the boys and young people, and, furthermore, the boys have over and over again proved to the satisfaction of the author that they themselves are perfectly competent to build these shacks, and not only to build them but to avoid accidents and serious falls while engaged in the work.
Thedifference between tomahawk shacks and axe houses reminds me of the difference between the ileum and the jejunum, of which my classmate once said: "There is no way of telling the beginning of one or the ending of t'other 'cept by the pale-pinkish hue of the latter."
It must be confessed that some of the shacks described in the preceding pages are rather stout and massive to be classed as tomahawk shelters, but, as indicated by my reference to physiology, this is not the writer's fault. The trouble is owing to the fact that nature abhors the arbitrary division line which man loves to make for his own convenience. The tomahawk shacks gradually evolve into axe camps and houses and "there is no telling the beginning of one and the end of t'other." Hence, when I say that all the previous shacks, sheds, shelters, and shanties are fashioned with a hatchet, the statement must be accepted as true only so far asit ispossible to build them without an axe; but in looking over the diagram it is evident at a glance that the logs are growing so thick that the necessity of the woodman's axe is more and more apparent; nevertheless, the accompanying caches have been classed with the tomahawk group and we will allow them to remain there.
Wherever man travels in the wilderness he finds it necessary to cache—that is, hide or secure some of his goods or provisions. The security of these caches (Figs.98-111) is considered sacred in the wilds and they are not disturbed by savages or whites; but bears, foxes, husky dogs, porcupines, and wolverenes are devoid of any conscientious scruples and unless the cache is absolutely secure they will raid it.
Fig. 98.Fig. 99.Fig. 100.Fig. 101.Fig. 102.Fig. 103.Fig. 104.Fig. 105.