My Tropic Isle | Page 5

of
undisciplined snakes. Definite sanitary reasons, supplemented by the
fact that where bats are there will the snakes be gathered together, and a
pious repugnance to snakes as lodgers, made the casting out of the bats
a joyful duty.
So we lived, more out of the hut than in it, from October, 1897, until
Christmas Day, 1903. We find the bungalow, though it, too, has no
ceiling, much more to our convenience, for the hut has become
crowded. It could no longer contain our content and the portable
property which became caught in its vortex.
In the designing of the bungalow two essentials were supreme, cost and
comfort--minimum of cost, maximum of comfort. Aught else was as
nothing. There was no alignment to obey, no rigid rules and regulations
as to style and material. The surroundings being our own, we had
compassion on them, neither offering them insult with pretentious
prettiness nor domineering over them with vain assumption and display.
Low walls, unaspiring roof, and sheltering veranda, so contrived as to
create, not tickling, fidgety draughts but smooth currents, "so full as
seem asleep," to flush each room so sweetly and softly that no
perceptible difference between the air under the roof and of the forest is
at any time perceptible.
Since the kitchen (as necessary here as elsewhere) is not only of my
own design but nearly every part of the construction absolutely the
work of my unaided, inexperienced hands, I shall describe it in
detail--not because it presents features provocative of pride, but
because the ideas it embodies may be worth the consideration of others

similarly situated who want a substantial, smokeless, dry, convenient
appurtenance to their dwelling. Two contrary conditions had to be
considered--the hostility of white ants to buildings of wood, and the
necessity for raising the floor but slightly above the level of the ground.
A bloodwood-tree, tall, straight, and slim, was felled. It provided three
logs--two each 15 feet long and one 13 feet. From another tree another
13-foot log was sawn. All the sapwood was adzed off; the ends were
"checked" so that they would interlock. Far too weighty to lift, the logs
were toilfully transported inch by inch on rollers with a crowbar as a
lever. Duly packed up with stones and levelled, they formed the
foundations, but prior to setting them a bed of home-made asphalt
(boiling tar and seashore sand) was spread on the ground where they
were destined to lie. Having adjusted each in its due position, I adzed
the upper faces and cut a series of mortices for the studs, which were
obtained in the bush--mere thin, straight, dry trees which had
succumbed to bush fires. Each was roughly squared with the adze and
planed and tenoned.
Good fortune presented, greatly to the easement of labour, two splendid
pieces of driftwood for posts for one of the doors. To the sea also I was
indebted for long pieces to serve as wall plates, one being the jibboom
of what must have been a sturdily-built boat, while the broken mast of a
cutter fitted in splendidly as a ridge-pole. For the walls I visited an old
bean-tree log in the jungle, cut off blocks in suitable lengths, and split
them with maul and wedges into rough slabs, roughly adzed away
superfluous thickness, and carried them one by one to the brink of the
canyon, down which I cast them. Then each had to be carried up the
steep side and on to the site, the distance from the log in the jungle
being about three hundred yards.
Within the skeleton of the building I improvised a rough bench, upon
which the slabs were dressed with the plane and the edges bevelled so
that each would fit on the other to the exclusion of the rain. Upon the
uprights I nailed inch slats perpendicularly, against which the slabs
were placed, each being held in place temporarily until the panel was
complete, when other slats retained them. The rafters were manipulated

of odd sorts of timber and the roof of second-used corrugated iron, the
previous nail holes being stopped with solder. A roomy recess with a
beaten clay floor was provided for the cooking stove. Each of the two
doors was made in horizontal halves, with a hinged fanlight over the
lintel, and the window spaces filled with wooden shutters, hinged from
the top. The floor (an important feature) is of asphalt on a foundation of
earth and charcoal solidly compressed. But before carting in the
material boards were placed temporarily edgeways alongside the
bedlogs round the interior. Then when the earthen foundation was
complete the boards were removed, leaving a space of about an inch,
which was filled with asphalt, well rammed, consistently with the
whole of the floor space.
All this