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These, emulating their white masters, had crawled into the shade of wall or tree, and curled up in slumber. The jail was a long, low building in the southern angle of the castle courtyard. Its walls were of mud baked in the tropical sun, and its roof was of palm-thatch. The windows were mere slits in the thick, hard walls, and gave little light or air. The doors were stout, and tightly barred.
Divers national peculiarities of the physique of homes; as, Tartars' tents, Esquimaux snow-pits, Caffre kraals, Steppe huts, South-sea palm-thatch, tree-villages, caves, log-cabins, and so forth.
Knowing that I can leave him when I like he will continue to behave himself." The homes of the poorer people are mere huts generally built of palmwood and covered with palm-thatch. The houses of the country people are exactly like the "bohios" used by the Indians at the time of the conquest, as pictured and described by the early writers.
And now Pentaur was distinctly visible against a background of flaring light, for some fire-brands had fallen on the dry palm-thatch of the hovel behind him, and roaring flames rose up to the dark heavens. The poet heard the threatening blaze behind him.
It was, I fancy, the remains of the village club-house. It had a certain amount of palm-thatch roof and some of its left-hand side left, the rest of the structure was bare old poles with filaments of palm mat hanging from them here and there; and really if it hadn't been for the roof one wouldn't have known whether one was inside or outside it.
The huts themselves were primitive to a degree, the floor being earth, the roof, of palm-thatch or the leaves of the cocoa-nut tree, the sides hard-posts driven in the ground and interlaced with wattle and plaster, and inside scarcely high enough for its owner to walk upright.
When walking in procession, they warn the profane out of the way by striking one slip of wood upon another. They are wilder in appearance than the Hindu Jogi or Sanyasi, who also affects the use of ashes, but neglects that of the palm-thatch.
It was almost as large as one of his own caravels, for it was over forty feet long and fully eight feet wide. It was paddled by twenty-five Indians, while in the middle, under an awning of palm-thatch sat the chief Indian, or cacique, as he was called. A curious kind of sail had been rigged to catch the breeze, and the canoe was loaded with fruits and Indian merchandise.
A stone or brick house could not stand here; but wood and palm-thatch are both light and tough enough to be safe, let the ground give way as it will. The soil, however, is very rich. The pitch certainly does not injure vegetation, though plants will not grow actually in it. The first plants which caught our eyes were pine-apples, for which La Brea is famous.
They were rankest beside the stream, which ran at one edge of the hollow under the rise of the plateau. At the side of the clearing toward the stream stood a hut, built of cocoa-palm logs. Its roof of palm-thatch had been scattered by storms. Nearer the stream on a bench were an old decaying wash-tub and a board. A broken frying-pan and a rusty axe-head lay in the grass.
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