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The flames of the huge wood fire dashed the walls and floor with a velvety red and black, and the large iron kettle, bought of the Company at Fort Sacrament, puffed out geysers of steam. The place was a low but with parchment windows and rough mud-mortar lumped between the logs.
The flames of the huge wood fire dashed the walls and floor with a velvety red and black, and the large iron kettle, bought of the Company at Fort Sacrament, puffed out geysers of steam. The place was a low but with parchment windows and rough mud-mortar lumped between the logs.
When the plants are growing up they dig between them, and heap up round each stalk a little mound of earth. We passed many little houses consisting of one square room, built of mud-bricks, with mud-mortar stuck full of little stones; without windows, but generally possessing the luxury of a chimney, with a couple of bricks forming an arch over it to keep out the rain.
The flames of the huge wood-fire dashed the walls and floor with a velvety red and black, and the large iron kettle, bought of the Company at Fort Sacrament, puffed out geysers of steam. The place was a low hut with parchment windows and rough mud-mortar lumped between the logs.
The Colonel, Potts, and the Boy selected the stone, and brought it on a rude litter out of a natural quarry from a place a mile or more away up on the bare mountain-side. O'Flynn mixed and handed up the mud-mortar, while Mac put in some brisk work with it before it stiffened in the increasing cold.
After a little rest I went to see what sort of a place it was. Found it a tolerably well-built place; the houses are constructed of stone and mud-mortar; some have even got a touch of lime or pipe-clay wash. Several of the streets are covered in at the top like those of Ghadames. Very few people stirring about, being occupied in the suburban gardens.
When they had hoisted up, and fixed in place, the logs on each side, and the big fellow that went all across on top; when they had filled the inconsiderable cracks between the bottles with some of the mud-mortar with which the logs were to be chinked, behold a double glass window fit for a king! The Boy was immensely pleased. "Oh, that's an old dodge," said Mac depreciatingly.
The cracks in the walls were chinked with moss and mud-mortar. The floor was the naked ground, "to be carpeted with skins by-and-by," so Mac said; but nobody believed Mac would put a skin to any such sensible use. The unreasonable mildness of three or four days and the little surface thaw, came to an abrupt end in a cold rain that turned to sleet as it fell.
What was placed upon these does not appear, but most probably it was brush, bark, or slabs, covered with a layer of mud-mortar. The beams show no signs of the saw or axe; on the contrary, they appear to have been hacked off by means of some very imperfect instrument.
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