Chapter 18 - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness by Mayne Reid
How to build a Log-Cabin
“I need not describe the joy of my wife and the rest when I returned, and related to them what I had seen, as well as my adventure with the wolverene. The discovery that our new-made lake was nothing else than a great beaver-dam at once decided the question as to our remaining in the valley. Here was a source of wealth to us far greater than would have been any situation in the mines of Mexico—in fact, better than a mine itself. The skin of every beaver in that dam I knew to be worth a guinea and a half. I saw there were at least an hundred of them—there might be many more—and how soon would these multiply into thousands, producing annually four or five young to every pair of them. We could tend them—taking care to provide them with food—and destroy the wolverenes and any other of their enemies, that might exist in the valley. They would thus increase the faster, and we could easily prevent them from becoming too numerous by trapping the older ones, and carefully preserving their skins. After several years thus employed, we could return to civilised life, carrying with us enough of their valuable fur to sell for a smart fortune.
“The prospect of staying where we were was now delightful—the more so, as I was satisfied it was the best thing I could do. Even had I been able to procure a pair of fresh oxen at that moment, I should not have moved a step farther. What Mary had said in jest was now likely to be realised in earnest, We might yet make our fortune in the Desert!
“Of course, it was a settled point—we resolved to remain.
“The first thing to be done, then, was to provide ourselves with a house. It would be a ‘log-cabin,’ of course; and putting up a log-cabin was a mere bagatelle to Cudjo. During our residence in Virginia, he had built two or three on my farm; and no man knew better than he how to do the thing. No man knew better than he how to shape the logs, notch them, and lay them firmly in their beds—no man knew better how to split the ‘clap-boards,’ lay them on the rafters, and bind them fast, without even a single nail—no man knew how to ‘chink’ the walls, clay the chimney, and hang the door of a log-cabin better than Cudjo. No. I will answer for that—Cudjo could construct a log-cabin as well as the most renowned architect in the world.
“There was plenty of the right kind of timber at hand—plenty of tulip-trees with their tall straight trunks rising to the height of fifty feet without a branch; and for the next two days the axe of Cudjo could be heard with its constant ‘check—check,’ while every now and then the crash of a falling tree woke the echoes of the valley. While Cudjo was felling the timber and cutting it into logs of a proper length, none of the rest of us were idle. In cooking our meals, scouring the vessels, and looking after the children, Mary found sufficient employment; while Frank, Harry, and I, with the help of our horse Pompo, were able to drag the logs forward to the spot where we had designed to put up the cabin.
“On the third day, Cudjo notched the logs, and on the fourth we raised the walls up to the square. On the fifth, we set up the gables and rafters, which, you know, is done by shortening the gable-logs successively, as you go upward, and tying each pair of them by a pair of rafters notched into them, at the ends, precisely as the wall-logs below. A ridge-pole completed the frame, and that was laid by the evening of the fifth day.
“Upon the sixth day, Cudjo went to work upon a large oak which he had felled and cut into lengths of about four feet each, at the beginning of our operations. It was now somewhat dry, so as to split easily; and with his axe and a set of wedges he attacked it. By sunset, he had a pile of clap-boards beside him as large as a wagon—quite enough to ‘shingle’ the roof of our house. During that day, I employed myself in tempering the clay for chinking the walls and plastering the chimney.
“On the seventh day, we all rested from our labour. We did so because it was Sunday. We had resolved ever to keep the Sabbath. Though the eyes of men could not see us—which I fear is too often the reason for observing the sacred day—we knew that the eye of God was upon us, even in that remote valley.
“We rose as early as usual, and after eating our breakfast, the Bible was brought forth, and we offered—the only sacrifice to Him acceptable—the sacrifice of our humble prayers. Mary had been busy during the week, and our little ones were dressed out, as if for a holiday. Taking them along with us, we all walked down to the lake and some distance around its edge. We saw that the beavers had been as busy in building as we; and already their cone-shaped dwellings appeared above the water—some of them near the shore, and others upon the little islets. There was only one which we could reach, and this we examined with great curiosity. It stood only a few yards from the shore, but at a place where the water was deep on its front side. It was nearly cone-shaped, or rather the form of a bee-hive; and was constructed out of stones, sticks and mud mixed with grass. Part of it was under water, but although we could not look into the interior, we knew that there was an upper story above water-mark—for we saw the ends of the joists that supported the second floor. The entrance was toward the centre of the lake and under the water—so that in going out of and into his house, the beaver is always under the necessity of making a dive. But he does not mind that, as it seems to be rather a pleasure to him than an inconvenience. There was no entrance toward the land, as we had often heard. Indeed, it would be bad policy in the beaver, thus to make a door by which his enemy, the wolverene, could easily get in and destroy him. The houses were all plastered over with mud, which, by the flapping of the tails and the constant paddling of the broad web-feet, had become as smooth as if the mud had been laid on with a trowel. We knew that they were also plastered inside, so as to render them warm and commodious in winter.
“Some of these dwellings were not regular cones, but rather of an oval shape; and sometimes two were placed, as it were, ‘under one roof,’ so as to steady them in the water, and save labour in the building. They were all pretty large—many of them rising the height of a man above the surface of the lake, and with broad tops, where the beavers delighted to sit and sun themselves. Each house was built by its own inhabitants, and each of them was inhabited by a single pair of beavers—man and wife—and in some instances where there were families by four or five. Some of them who had finished their houses earlier than the rest, had already commenced gathering their provisions for the winter. These consisted of the leaves and soft twigs of several species of trees—such as willow, birch, and mulberry—and we saw collections of these floating in the water in front of several of the houses.
“It was late in the season for beavers to be constructing a new dam. It is generally in spring when they perform that labour; but it was evident that the present colony had just arrived—no doubt driven by trappers or Indians, or perhaps drought, from their last settlement, hundreds of miles away. We conjectured that they must have come up the stream that ran away to the eastward.
“They must have entered the valley some time before we discovered them, as it would have taken them several days to gnaw down the trees and accumulate the materials for the dam that had so suddenly started up to alarm us. Some of these trees were nearly a foot in diameter, while many of the stones—which they had rolled up or carried between their fore-paws and throat—would have weighed nearly a score of pounds.
“It was evident, then, they had arrived late in the season, and had worked hard to get ready for the winter. But Cudjo and I were determined, as soon as we should have finished our building operations, to lend them a hand in laying in their stock of provisions.”