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When any work which requires many hands is in the course of performance, as the building of log houses, barns, or shanties, all the neighbours are summoned, and give their best assistance in the construction. You know you said you could not have got on nearly so well without our help."
The heat all day had been very great, and it was refreshing to get out of the dusty car, even though the shanties, in which eating, drinking, and sleeping were supposed to be carried on, were of the very lowest description.
The furniture comprised a couple of bunk-beds, a few shelves, one table, several stools and benches, washstands built into the corners, and a comfortable sofa, seeming very much out of place in what, to our eyes, looked anything but a comfortable abode. Yet we were told it was one of the most luxurious shanties on the line.
The plumber had come upon the field, but his coming brought no relief. His was not a case of conscience. "Untrapped soil pipes opened into every floor and poisoned the tenants." Where the "dens of death" were in Baxter Street, big barracks crowded out the old shanties. More came every day. I remember the story of those shown in the picture.
A vast number of the mechanics and artisans who had been attracted to the place by the offers of the Czar availed themselves of this opportunity to provide themselves with homes, and they proceeded at once to erect houses. A great many of the structures thus built were mere huts or shanties, made of any rude materials that came most readily to hand, and put up in a very hasty manner.
Hurried footsteps passed to and fro, dark lanterns flashed for an instant, intensifying the blackness, and all of a sudden the sound I had been waiting for added to the weird horror of the situation, an alarm bugle, winding out its tale, clear and true to the farthest byways and the most remote shanties, followed by our tocsin, the deep-toned Roman Catholic Church bell, which was the signal that a general attack was in progress.
The home-coming of the men from the shanties had ever been a time of rejoicing in the community. The Macdonald gang were especially welcome, for they always came back with honor and with the rewards of their winter's work.
Hard by it stood another of like type but of lesser dimension. Two or three mere shanties lifted level with great stumps, crude, unpainted buildings. Smoke issued from the pipe of the larger, and a white-aproned man stood in the doorway. Somewhere in the screen of woods a whistle shrilled. Benton looked at his watch. "We made good time, in spite of the little roll," said he.
But first impressions are not everything. Walvis Bay is desolate; a study in yellow ochre sands, burnt sienna duns, tin shanties veiled in hot desert winds, and a sea that seldom knows anything more than a ripple. But that is the point. Walvis Bay is nothing now but it is a bay. As a fact, it looks to be one of the finest natural harbours in the world.
They have never had any chances, these people, shut in by this wall of mountains. There is not much inspiration to be charitable and kind, living in one of these little shanties during the long cold winters. It's a pretty fine nature that doesn't get warped and narrowed by the life." "Phoebe's didn't," thought Billie, while she sliced bread for the doctor's lunch.
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