Hut

“ The tiny hut is an abode of darkness made visible by a single candle, mounted in its own grease in the worst available position for giving light, lest the opening of the door cast the faintest beam into the sunken road outside. ”

“ The wattle-work hut with its roof of interlaced boughs, the skins sewn by fine needles with entrails or sinews, the matted twigs, grasses, and rushes are all the crude beginnings of an art which tells of the settled life of to-day. ”

“ But that was down in the creek, round the hut was the plain, barren here as elsewhere; no effort had been made to cultivate it or improve it, and the desert came up to the very doors. The only sign of human life was the refuse from the small household—an empty tin or two, fragments of broken bottles, and scraps of rag and paper, only that and the hut itself, and a small yard for horses and cattle, that was all—not a tree, not a green thing. ”

“ From Amelia's Waard an unbroken range of forest covers each bank of the river, saving here and there where a hut discovers itself, inhabited by free people of colour, with a rood or two of bared ground about it; or where the wood-cutter has erected himself a dwelling and cleared a few acres for pasturage. Sometimes you see level ground on each side of you for two or three hours at a stretch; at other times a gently sloping hill presents itself; and often, on turning a point, the eye is pleased with the contrast of an almost perpendicular height jutting into the water. ”

“ Round the hut grow ferns and a bushy tangle of ribbon-wood, broom and coprosma trees, and from its windows you look up towards the head of the glacier or across to the mountains on the opposite side, and on the far side of a small tributary glacier behind Cape Defiance, you hear a waterfall thundering down from a height of a thousand feet. ”

“ I heard nothing out of the usual course of nature till I got within three-quarters of a mile of the half-way hut. Then I heard not only the moaning, but other noises not human, and a clapping or beating as with two flat sticks. All this was confined to one spot, and I could locate that spot exactly: in a rather deep hollow, with three hills butting up around. The wind from some cause always drew down into that hollow and kept its whole surface smooth, not a spear or root of grass there, and as round as the inside of a cup. ”

“ Yet as the days draw in, lights go on earlier, and our hut grows fuller and work more engrossing. Outside the laughing, gurgling wavelets, chasing each other round the rocks, are replaced by white-crested breakers that rage along the shore at high tide and cut us off from the town. ”

“ In many bush huts, when the women have a taste for decoration, pink everlastings are tied up in thick bunches and inserted in a close compact row between the top of the hut wall and the sloping edge of the uncoiled rafters, so as to form a cornice, beautiful in itself, and also in picturesque harmony with the rude materials of the dwellings. ”

“ The main party put up a hut of rocks, canvas, boat- and snow-slabs, while selected men scoured the coasts for caches, sought land-game, and watched seal-holes, until utter darkness drove all to the hut. ”

“ On the floor of the hut is a heap of fine, twisting tree-roots which she brought from the forest yesterday, and under the shadow of her grassy roof she sits before the door weaving them into strong, neat baskets, like the one in which the men carried their dinner when they went to hunt. While she works other women come too with their work, sit beside her in the shade, and chatter away in a very queer-sounding language. ”

“ Our guide had gone back after bringing us thus far, and we never thought of having the slightest difficulty in reaching the hut again. Now, when we turned to go, the whole place seemed to have changed. There was no one to ask our way, and the dusk was falling. Each stony ridge we climbed over we imagined to be the last, and that we should see the hut from its summit. But the hut was nowhere: it had vanished. A kind of despair seized us as we wandered hither and thither in the gathering gloom, seeing around us naught but stones:
“A great grey chaos—a land half-made. ”

“ The large amount of timber which went to make the hut was mostly landed. The ponies and dogs were sleeping in the sun on shore. A large green tent housed the hut builders, and the site for the hut was levelled.
"Such weather in such a place comes nearer to satisfying my ideal of perfection than any condition I have ever experienced. The warm glow of the sun with the keen invigorating cold of the air forms a combination which is inexpressibly health-giving and satisfying to me, whilst the golden light on this wonderful scene of mountain and ice satisfies every claim of scenic magnificence. ”

“ That hut where we spent the pleasant Christmas-day you know of is degraded into the kitchen, and seems moved backward, although it stands in the same place, for a new house is built nearer the river, quite overwhelming the old slab hut in its grandeur—a long low wooden house, with deep cool verandahs all round, already festooned with passion-flowers, and young grapevines, and fronted by a flower garden, all a-blaze with petunias and geraniums. ”

“ Silently, one after another, the relatives creep into the hut and sit upon cooking pots, mats, stools and logs of wood, until the hut is filled with men and women knit together with a common sorrow. The strong man they have remembered in the sylvan chase, the keen fisherman, or possibly the courageous warrior they have known and admired, and in their beautiful simplicity loved, is stretched upon the hard bamboo bed which his busy hands had made. ”

“ Before the hut, as I have said, and hiding it, but only partially hiding it, as I found afterwards, from one of the paths across the Swamp, was a clump of bushes, with a tall pyramidal cedar or two rising up in the midst. I dare say, in the confusion of objects, the trees, the bushes, the green and yellow leaves, the fallen trunks, cast in every wild variety of attitude; the plashy ground, and here and there a higher piece of sandy bank with gray and yellow surfaces, thousands of people might pass along that way without a suspicion that any cabin was near. ”

“ All that night rain poured in torrents and the wind howled round the hut in furious gusts. Now this hut with its framework of wood looks very fragile, and as it rocked and shook me in my bunk all night I wondered would it stand the strain. I was assured in the morning that it was built on very solid foundations and anchored firmly to the rock, and not at all likely to be blown over. That day and the following night the wind and rain continued, so we left the hut and tramped back to the Hermitage and there stayed for another two days. ”

“ Thursday, January 19.—The hut is becoming the most comfortable dwelling-place imaginable. We have made unto ourselves a truly seductive home, within the walls of which peace, quiet, and comfort reign supreme. ”

“ This is far too fine a trough for a tumble-down hut like ours. Why, there is scarcely a place in the roof where the rain does not come through. If we were to keep this trough in such a hut, it would be spoiled in a month. You must go back to your fish and ask it for a new hut. ”

“ Not a soul was to be seen anywhere, not a living being of any description. In a shower of pelting rain we took possession of the largest hut. It is decidedly annoying to get thoroughly wet at the end of a long day, and the prospect of a night in damp clothes was in no way pleasing. The hut was damp and cold, and it had the chilly feeling which only comes from a long period of emptiness, and strikes to the marrow. ”

“ The floor of the hut was about ten feet in diameter, [and the hut itself] was made of a frame of drift wood covered with sod, and was entered by a narrow tunnel two feet high and eighteen inches wide. We saw traces of a great many houses, showing that quite a large village was at one time located here. In some only a few decaying timbers were to be seen, in others all the timbers had vanished and only the excavation remained. Some six miles farther up the stream I noticed other ruins, indicating that many natives once lived here, though now their number has dwindled to one family. ”

“ Little I ask, my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,
(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own;—
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun. ”

“ Presently, while we rested outside that Alpine hut which faces the three sphinx-like mountains, there came back, from climbing the smallest and most dangerous of those peaks, one, pale from heat, and trembling with fatigue; a tall man, with long brown hands, and a long, thin, bearded face. ”

“ I would, God knows, in a poor woodman's hut
Have spent my peaceful days, and shar'd my crust
With her who would have cheer'd me, rather far
Than on this throne; but, being what I am,
I'll be it nobly. ”

“ Our solitary blankets formed poor padding against the inequalities of the rough-hewn boards, and equally ineffectual to keep out the cold draughts which whistled under the ill-fitting door of the hut. A wayside house on the road to the mines is merely a rough log hut of a single room ”

“ The way led through the native huts and without them. It was downhill going, as the village, in African fashion, was built on the side of a rise which culminated in the chief’s hut, while Mwezi lived, very close to the source of the river I have mentioned. We emerged through trees into a grassy open space of perhaps thirty paces wide, and I saw at once the old fellow sitting at the door of his hut beneath the shade of a wild vine which grew luxuriantly over the porch and roof. ”

“ As a protection to the garden, my master had erected a hut, where men slept at night. After a while, however, the place became so haunted that the watchmen fled, and slept any where they could in the bush. ”

“ The construction of a hut, he tells us, is of loose stones, arranged for the most part with some tendency to circularity and placed where the wind cannot act upon it with violence, and where the water would run easily away, because it has no floor but the naked ground. ”

“ At his request, the partners remained in the buggy, where they spent an interval of a few minutes in covetous admiration of the neat hut with its bark roof, the iron windlass, the stack of timber slabs for lining the shaft, and the suggestively solid opening of the shaft itself. ”

“ The hut is of clay, with a roof of thatch, which makes it cooler than the store with its roof of galvanised iron. White ants are usually at work upon the clay walls, sending down little showers of dust upon the sleeper. ”

“ The huts here are like those already described, only they are dry because of the porous character of the ground. Three or four families live in one each having a private polog of deer-skins, of which there are several thicknesses on the floor. We were shown into one—the snuggest storm nest imaginable, and perfectly clean. The common hut is far otherwise; dogs mingle with the food, hair is everywhere, and strangely persistent smells that defy even the Arctic frosts. The children seemed in fair ratio with the adults. ”

“ The newly married couple at once take possession of a new, small hut, which has been erected for them. These huts are made with a light frame of poles, the sides and roof being heavily thatched with reeds. They are by no means warm or impervious to the weather; indeed, many breaks in the thatching admit of ventilation to a degree that must lower the temperature in winter to a point well-nigh unbearable. ”

“ Not even the solid Highland hut can withstand the violence of the wind in this region. The dwelling is, therefore, excavated in the earth, the wall requisite for the support of the roof scarcely rising two feet above the surface, and the whole is surrounded with turf stacks to ward off the gales. ”

“ The cleared space about a hut is as it were an island in the vast surrounding oceanlike wilderness, into which if a little child ventures alone death from privation is generally the consequence, even though so short a distance as a few hundred yards only may separate the sufferer from its heart-broken parents. ”

“ In fact, except to one accustomed to the woods, it would be dangerous to go far away from the hut. As long as it is fine, you will find your way back by following your own tracks, but if the weather changed suddenly, and it came on to snow, your case would be hopeless. One of the advantages of placing our hut on a stream is that it forms a great aid to finding one's way back. ”

“ She saw some steps before her a kind of hut, formed by several trees growing near together and interlacing their branches. Bowing her head, she entered, and found that by carefully connecting some branches she could form a pretty and secure retreat. ”

“ I found my friend in good health and spirits, strictly guarded in a small thatched hut, of bamboo wattle and clay: the situation was pretty, and commanded a view of the Ryott valley and the snowy mountains; there were some picturesque chaits hard by, and a blacksmith’s forge. Our walks were confined to a few steps in front of the hut, and included a puddle and a spring of water. We had one black room with a small window, and a fire in the middle on a stone ”

“ Building a hut is nothing new to us, and we are anxious to begin fishing and wandering about, so if you will show us where we can cut enough good heavy saplings for supports, we will start right at it. We can have them cut and in place before dinner and then the men can bring us the boards after dinner and we will be all shipshape by nightfall,” said Garry. ”

“ The materials for their huts grow around them in the greatest abundance, a few forked upright poles form the walls, and bear others forming the roof; thin sticks tied horizontally or perpendicularly to the uprights, both inside and out, forming a double wall, complete the framework of the hut, which is then plastered with clay or earth, or covered with grass or “loandos,” or mats made of the dried stem of the papyrus. ”