Log house

“ The first months of this year found us very anxious to get the log-house finished, which had been so well begun by our four gentlemen, and as soon as the weather moderated a little, and our means allowed us to get help, we had it roofed, floored, chinked, and mossed. It was necessary to get it finished, so that we might move before the great spring thaw should cover the forest-paths with seas of slush and mud, and before the creek between us and our domicile should be swollen so as to render it impassable for ladies. ”

“ When the timber grew sparser and the footing better they bounded on, crashing through thick second-growth groves and leaping white patches of open, their goal the log-house where danger menaced loved ones. As they emerged into the wide clearing the clouds above them parted and the starlight showed a number of forms creeping toward the cover of the wood. ”

“ XLVI THE BUILDING OF THE LOG HOUSE How a Forty-Foot-Front, Two-Story Pioneer Log House Was Put Up with the Help of "Backwoods Farmers"—Making Plans with a Pocket Knife.
Our log house on the shore of Big Tink Pond, Pike County, Pa., was built long before the general public had been educated to enjoy the subtle charms of wild nature, at a time when nature-study was confined to scientists and children, and long before it was fashionable to have wild fowl on one's lawn and wild flowers in one's garden. ”

“ Primarily, in its Canadian and original sense, the term means a log-house—a hut made of rough squared logs, built up upon each other. Such log-huts are not common in this country, though they may be seen here and there. The mild climate does not require such a style of building. The labour of cutting and squaring logs for the purpose is great. The native wharè of thatch is quickly and easily raised, serves all requirements, and lasts for years. ”

“ How the First Log Houses were built.—If we could have made a visit to one of the rough log houses of the Pilgrims after they had brought in their scanty furniture from the vessel, and when affairs had become a little settled, many things would have seemed strange to us.
There is no front entry to the house, for there is only one rough door, and that opens directly into the house ”

“ Many families still live in log-houses, but some streets consist almost entirely of neat, well-built frame houses, at proper distances from each other, each house has a garden attached to it. The four-story cotton and woollen factories are of brick; Mr. Rapp’s dwelling-house, not yet completed, and a newly-begun warehouse, II.162 are also to be of brick. The log-houses stand in the rear of the line which the new houses are to occupy in the street, so that when in time they wish to erect brick buildings, it may be done without incommoding the tenants of the log dwellings. ”

“ The remains of human handicraft, in the form of log-houses or lake-dwellings, have been found buried under each and all these peat growths: a depth of 25 feet had overgrown the log-house discovered at Inver, Co. Donegal, and on the floor-level, outside the building, were traces of the corkers of the great oak forest age. ”

“ The side walls and end wall are built up from the top of the shack to form a big, wide log chimney under which the open camp-fire is built on the ground. The Red Jacket is roofed with bark in the same manner as the New Brunswick and Christopher Gist and occupies the important position of the missing link between the true log cabin or log house and the rude log camp of the hunter. If you will look at Fig. ”

“ Steamers are constantly arriving at, and departing from the wharf, on their passage up and down the river. This is one of the many examples to be met with in the western country, of towns springing into importance within the memory of comparatively young men—a log-house is still standing, which is shewn as the first habitation built by the backwoodsman, who squatted in the forest where now stands a handsome and flourishing city. ”

“ A log house, in western parlance, differs from a cabin in the logs being hewn on two sides to an equal thickness before raising,—in having a framed and shingled roof, a brick or stone chimney, windows, tight floors, and are frequently clapboarded on the outside and plastered within. ”

“ Life in the log-cabin had not become pleasanter with the advance of the summer; we were all impatient to be out of it. We looked forward to our occupation of the new house with an eagerness which even in us boys must have had some sense of present discomfort at the bottom of it. We were to have a parlor, a dining-room, and a library; there were to be three chambers for the family and a spare room; after six months in the log-cabin we could hardly have imagined it, if we had not seen these divisions actually made by the studding. ”

“ It is almost impossible to trap these wanderers. Before they establish their quarters, they study the landscape with the eye of a painter. They take a daguerrian view of objects as they are. The log-hut, with its curling smoke—the hay-stack crowned with snow—the settler's cart tipped up, its tongue pointing towards the north star—a goose understands as well as a man. They never blow up nor work destruction. But just try an artificial house of boughs, a brush fence, or an intrenchment near their lines. ”

“ Nothing is more comfortable than a log cabin which has been carefully built and finished; but for some reason—probably because there seemed always a more urgent duty calling to us around the corner—we never plastered our house at all. The result was that on many future winter mornings we awoke to find ourselves chastely blanketed by snow, while the only warm spot in our living-room was that directly in front of the fireplace, where great logs burned all day. Even there our faces scorched while our spines slowly congealed, until we learned to revolve before the fire like a bird upon a spit. ”

“ A log house can be made as airy as any tent, and is out and out more comfortable. A rough-hewed porch-roof, projecting like the veranda of a Swiss chalet, will keep the cabin both dry and airy, square holes in the center of each wall can serve as windows in fine weather, and during a storm can be kept shut with a sliding board. ”

“ There were four families within a mile of us, all comfortably settled in small log houses. For temporary use we built a rude bark shanty that had a partition of blankets, living in this primitive manner until my father and D'ri had felled the timber and built a log house. We brought flour from Malone,—a dozen sacks or more,—and while they were building, I had to supply my mother with fish and game and berries for the table—a thing easy enough to do in that land of plenty. When the logs were cut and hewn I went away, horseback, to Canton for a jug of rum. ”

“ A TYPICAL LOG HOUSE.
Page 46.
Here was a genuine pioneer: his house of logs, hinges wood, latch ditto, locks none; a black bear, three squirrels, a turtle-dove, two dogs, and a coon made up his earthly possessions. He was tired of the place.
"Laws, Elder! when I fust come ye could kill a deer close by, and ketch a string of trout off the doorsteps; but everything's sp'iled. Men beginning to wear b'iled shirts, and I can't stand it. ”

“ Now that we know how to make doors and door-latches, locks, bolts, and bars, we may busy ourselves with building an American log cabin. It is all well enough to build our shacks and shanties and camps of logs with the bark on them, but, when one wishes to build a log cabin, one wants a house that will last. ”

“ It seems to be natural and proper to follow the camp as it grows until it develops into a somewhat pretentious log house, but this book must not be considered as competing in any manner with professional architects. The buildings here suggested require a woodsman more than an architect; the work demands more the skill of the axeman than that of the carpenter and joiner. The log houses are supposed to be buildings which any real outdoor man should be able to erect by himself and for himself. ”

“ The most comfortable known dwelling is understood to be the well-constructed log-house, which is built in a week, is free from damp, easily kept clean, cool in summer, and warm in winter, stable and unreverberating, and more durable than the generality of brick dwellings. ”

“ Upon the strength of such an inducement to the one who should put the finishing stroke to the building, Plante, Pillon, and Manaigre, whom the waggish Plante persisted in calling "mon nègre," whenever he felt himself out of the reach of the other's arm, all went vigorously to work.
Building a log house is a somewhat curious process. First, as will be conceived, the logs are laid one upon another and jointed at the corners, until the walls have reached the required height. The chimney is formed by four poles of the proper length, interlaced with a wicker-work of small branches. ”

“ The front of the northland tilt is faced in with small logs set on end, as shown in the unfinished one (Fig. 189) ; this makes a substantial, warm winter camp. If the logs fit close together on the roof they may be calked with moss and dry grass. If the cracks are too wide on account of the unevenness of the log, cover them first with grass, fine brush, or browse and over all place a coating of sod or mud and you will have a house fit for a king to live in. ”

“ These logs were posts, studs, boards, clapboards, laths, plaster, and nails, all in one. Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree. The house had large stone chimneys, and was roofed with spruce-bark. The windows were imported, all but the casings. One end was a regular logger's camp, for the boarders, with the usual fir floor and log benches. Thus this house was but a slight departure from the hollow tree, which the bear still inhabits,—being a hollow made with trees piled up, with a coating of bark like its original. ”

“ Here my father got his goods under shelter and left my mother, and returned to Ryerse Creek, intending to build a log-house as soon as possible. Half a dozen active men will build a very comfortable primitive log-house in ten or twelve days ”

“ Quoting from Horace Kephart's excellent book on woodcraft, an experienced man can tell a straight-grained log "by merely scanning the bark"; if the ridges and furrows of the bark run straight up and down the wood will have a corresponding straight grain, but if they are spiral the wood will split "waney" or not at all. "Waney" is a good word, almost as good as "sensiation"; so when you try to quarter a log with which to chink your cabin or log house don't select a "waney" log. To quarter a log split it as shown in Fig. ”

“ Leaving these, the last of the Phrygian tombs, we struck across the valley and ascended a high range of hills, covered with pine, to an upland, wooded region. Here we found a summer village of log cabins, scattered over a grassy slope. The people regarded us with some curiosity, and the women hastily concealed their faces. Mr. H. rode up to a large new house, and peeped in between the logs. There were several women inside, who started up in great confusion and threw over their heads whatever article was most convenient. ”

“ It would not be easy to say where or when the first log cabin was built, but it is safe to say that it was somewhere in the English colonies of North America, and it is certain that it became the type of the settler's house throughout the whole middle west. It may be called the American house, the Western house, the Ohio house. Hardly any other house was built for a hundred years by the men who were clearing the land for the stately mansions of our day. As long as the primeval forests stood, the log cabin remained the woodsman's home ”

“ Then they must be ready for a long journey in the cars and steamboats, up rivers and across lakes, and sometimes for miles and miles through woods, where they see no houses nor people, excepting here and there a single log cabin with two or three ragged children at play outside, or a baby creeping over the doorstep, while farther on among the trees stands a man with his axe, cutting, with heavy blows, some tall trees into such logs as those of which the house is built. ”

“ There was, however, abundance of work to be done in the house, and plenty of hard exercise in sawing up logs for the stove fires. These, while the severer frost lasted, were never allowed to go out, and no one had reason to complain of the want of warmth inside the house; indeed, the walls were so thick, that they retained the heat in the way an ordinary brick or plank building could not have done. Old and young declared, that in spite of cold and snow, they had never spent a happier or pleasanter winter. ”

“ The log-houses have fallen to decay—a growth of young pines, a waste of emerald turf with the charred logs that once formed part of the enclosure, now scarcely serve to mark out the old settlement; no trace or record remains of the first breakers of the bush—another race occupy the ground. ”

“ The remains of the log were also supposed to guard the house against fire and lightning.
To this day the ritual of bringing in the Yule log is observed with much solemnity among the Southern Slavs, especially the Serbians. The log is usually a block of oak, but sometimes of olive or beech. They seem to think that they will have as many calves, lambs, pigs, and kids as they strike sparks out of the burning log. Some people carry a piece of the log out to the fields to protect them against hail. ”