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Men were never more brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and yet they had no homes. They made themselves thick-walled castles, with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent banquet-halls for pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawled for the night were often little better than dog-kennels. The Pompeians had no comfortable night-quarters.
Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of the port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with a patron saint of their own. His steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures within the old ramparts, between the black, lightless cluster of huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels.
A few extracts from my journal will describe the delay at Atada: "JAN. 26th, 1864. The huts are very large, about 20 feet in diameter, made entirely of reeds and straw, and very lofty, looking in the interior like huge inverted baskets, beehive shaped, very different to the dog-kennels of the more northern tribes.
Where the air to-day is filled with the hum of wheels and the roar of machinery, then was only open prairie innocent of any evidence of human occupation beyond some three or four things like dog-kennels badly built of loose lattice-work on the river's bank. These were the red Indians' Turkish baths. The old code of morality has vanished with the red Indian and the trout-fishing.
Freshets from the prairies were rushing down the coole beneath, carrying everything before them dog-kennels, logs, broken furniture, boxes, and all the usual debris found scattered about the houses on the prairie.
"Near the stables and dog-kennels, too! But I suppose I must pull it down. I am not bound to do so legally; it is no condition of the will. But in honour and gratitude I ought not to disobey poor Sir Philip's positive injunction." "Of that," said I, gravely, "there cannot be a doubt." Here our conversation was interrupted by Mrs. Gates, who informed us that dinner was served in the library.
"Near the stables and dog-kennels, too! But I suppose I must pull it down. I am not bound to do so legally; it is no condition of the will. But in honour and gratitude I ought not to disobey poor Sir Philip's positive injunction." "Of that," said I, gravely, "there cannot be a doubt." Here our conversation was interrupted by Mrs. Gates, who informed us that dinner was served in the library.
A little way further on was another hedge, not so high, also of dry thorn bushes, very prickly and spiteful-looking, and within this was a sort of village of huts. There were no gardens and no roads. Just huts built of wood and twigs and clay, and roofed with great palm-leaves, dumped down anywhere. The doors of these houses were very low, like the doors of dog-kennels.
The marine pointed it out to him, and Jack, who felt excessively hungry, crawled over and between chests, until he found himself fairly in a hole infinitely inferior to the dog-kennels which received his father's pointers. "I'd not only give up the ocean," thought Jack, "and my share of it, but also my share of the Harpy, unto any one who fancies it.
Outside, the dog-kennels had been newly thatched with tohi grass, the garden weeded and freshly dug, the chopping-block and camp-oven as clean as scrubbing could make them. It was too late in the year for fruit, but Salter's currant, raspberry, and gooseberry bushes gave us a good idea of how well he must have fared in the summer.
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