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Updated: June 16, 2025
The roof was covered with large split shingles, held down by long weight-poles, and the floors were of puncheons, wide pieces of oak or poplar, two or three inches thick, split and hewn with an axe, and laid upon sleepers. If the hewing is well done, such floors are as level and smooth as if fashioned of machine-made material.
In Holland, a popular monarch taps some forty puncheons of schnapps, and makes the people drunk. In Belgium, he gets up a high mass, and a procession of virgins. In the States, a rabid diatribe against England, and a spice of Lynch Law, are clap-trap. But every land has its own peculiar leaning to be gratified by some one concession or compliment in preference to every other.
Suzanne is a sad coquette," said Colonel Auguste Chouteau, laughing, as we set out for the ball. The sun was hanging low over the western hills as we approached the barracks, and out of the open windows came the merry, mad sounds of violin, guitar, and flageolet, the tinkle of a triangle now and then, the shouts of laughter, the shuffle of many feet over the puncheons.
The floor was composed of what by the settlers were termed puncheons; which were made by splitting in half trees of some eighteen inches in diameter, and hewing the faces of them as regular as possible with the broad-axe. These were laid, bark side downwards, upon sleepers running crosswise for the purpose, and formed at least a dry, solid and durable, if not polished, floor.
On the town wharves are often seen portly barrels, locally, "puncheons," filled with the weed, awaiting shipment by boat; most of the product goes to Louisville, but there are also large buyers in the smaller Kentucky towns. Occasionally, to-day, we have seen moored to some rustic landing a great covered barge, quite of the fashion of the golden age of Ohio boating.
But for the low ceiling and the wide cypress puncheons of the floor the room might have been a boudoir in a manor-house. On the slender-legged, polished mahogany table lay books in tasteful bindings; a diamond-paned bookcase stood in the corner; a fauteuil and various other chairs which might have come from the hands of an Adam were ranged about.
I knew that wine-casks are of very different dimensions, according to the sort of wine they contain: that under the different names of "pipes", "butts", "hogsheads", "puncheons", "tuns," and "pieces," they hold more or less, from the hogshead of hock of thirty gallons to the great tun of wine containing 252.
There was in the harness-cask about fifty pounds of salt meat, and a third of this quantity, together with half a small sack of flour, some tea and sugar mixed together in a bag, and an iron kettle and pannikin, was placed in the whale-boat. Rex, fearful of excesses among his crew, had also lowered down one of the two small puncheons of rum which the store-room contained.
Father Beret took the letter without apparent interest and said: "Thank you, my son, sit down again; the door-log is not wetter than the stools inside; I will sit by you." The wind had driven a flood of rain into the cabin through the open door, and water twinkled in puddles here and there on the floor's puncheons.
Did you ever roll to grog on board your greasy ballyhoo of blazes? Did you ever winter at Mahon? Did you ever lash and carry? Why, what are even a merchant-seaman's sorry yarns of voyages to China after tea-caddies, and voyages to the West Indies after sugar puncheons, and voyages to the Shetlands after seal-skins what are even these yarns, you Tubbs you! to high life in a man-of-war?
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