The colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven
hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began
at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and
thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very
lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their
old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of
their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being
any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great
deal of loss and trouble in the end.
While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to
make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast
as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and
pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from
them. The brush that was not needed for the fires was made into loose
fagots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where
the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use
against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would
keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in
fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a
trap.
When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they
dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted
the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any
newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built
fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall
takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of
stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and
called a sharpened stake a “_palum_.” A fence built of boards set up in
this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The
word fence itself is only a short word for “defence,”—a defence made of
pointed stakes planted in the ground.
The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of
a low earthwork that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as
possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so
that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs
were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but
from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through
high loopholes.
There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the
others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run
for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who
tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire
from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly
straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the
branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top
in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the
colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.
The gate was made as strong as possible, of smaller tree trunks lashed
together, and strengthened on the inside by crosspieces. When it was
closed, two logs, one at the top and one at the bottom, were laid in place
across it. Some one was always there to guard it, day and night, and could
see through a little window who was coming up the hill.
Although strongholds like this had not been necessary for many years in
their old home, there was one, built of stone in the ancient days, and
never allowed to go to ruin. It seemed very adventurous to the boys to be
erecting defences like that for their own families. But Romulus and Remus
had told them that this would be the only way of being quite safe. They
had a great deal that petty thieves might want to steal; and the chief
Amulius might take it into his head to send a force to attack them, if he
knew that so large a party of strangers had come in. When they had been
there some years, and more people had joined the colony, the seven hills
could be fortified so that nobody could take them. Colonus himself could
see that, and it gave him a feeling of confidence and respect for his
young cousin to know that he had seen it too.
By the time the palisade was finished, not only most of the land within it
was clear, but the material for the huts was ready and some huts had been
built. The timber was piled as it was cut, by the boys of the various
families, on the lots marked out for the houses. The younger children cut
reeds and grass for thatching and for the fodder of the cattle. They did
this work in little companies and had a very pleasant time. Sometimes they
caught fish, or shot waterfowl with their bows and arrows, or set snares
for game.
Later the men would gather stone for a stone wall in place of the
palisade, to run along the same line, and then the seasoned timbers of
their log wall would still be good for building purposes. There was a
steeper and narrower hill near the river which would make an excellent
fortress. But the thoughts of the colony now were given to laying out
farms.
They cleared and laid out wheat fields and orchards and vineyards as soon
as they found land suitable. As any farmer knows, the sooner land is
cultivated the more can be got out of it; it is not work that can all be
done in a year, or two years, or three. This is especially true of land
never used before for anything but pasture, and much of this had never
been used even for that. Sheep do not like wet ground, and both sheep and
cattle, unless they were tended constantly, might stray into the swampy
low grounds. Drainage would help that land; when some of it was drained it
would make rich lush meadows and golden grain fields. The land-loving
Vitali could see visions of richer crops than any they had ever harvested,
growing on that unpromising plain, if only they could have their way with
it.
The children who were here, there and everywhere, watching all that was
done and helping where they could, felt as if they were looking on at the
making of a new world. It was really almost like a miracle—some of the
ignorant marsh folk thought it was one—when that uncultivated hilltop,
overgrown with bushes and wind-stunted trees and with the rocky bones of
it cropping out here and there, became a trim encampment of orderly
thatched huts. The beasts grew sleek and fat on the good fodder and
grazing, and no one had appeared so far who had any evil designs. In fact,
few persons came near them at all. It was as if they had the new world all
to themselves.
In the house-building the children helped considerably after the men got
the timber frames up. Instead of building stone walls, they were going to
do what they had sometimes done before when a wall was run up
temporarily,—use mud. They set stakes in rows along the walls, not close
together like the palisade, but far enough apart for twigs and branches to
be woven in and out between them like a very rough basketry. When this was
done the men built a kind of pen on the ground, for a mixing bowl, and
brought lime and sand and clay and water, and mixed it with tough grass
into a sort of rough plaster. This was daubed all over the walls with
wooden spades until the whole was quite covered, and when it hardened it
would be weather-proof and warm. Small houses built in this “wattle and
daub” fashion have been known to last hundreds of years.
The thatched roof was four-sided, running up to a hole in the middle to
let out the smoke. When it rained, the rain dripped in around the edges of
the hole and ran into a tank under it. The altar with the sacred fire was
at one side of this tank, and when the room was dark the flame was
reflected in the wavering, shining depths of the water. The space opposite
the door, beyond the altar, was where the father and mother slept, and
later it might be walled off into a private room. Other rooms could be
partitioned off along the sides. In later times there was a small entry or
vestibule between the door and the inner rooms. But although the other
rooms might vary in number and size and use, the _atrium_, the middle
space, in which were the altar and the _impluvium_ or water pool, remained
the same. It was the heart of the home. Here the family worship was held,
and this was the common room of the family.
The plan of the encampment itself was like the house on a larger scale.
The huts were built around the inside of the palisade, with a separating
space or belt of land that was never plowed or built on—the _pomerium_,
the space “before the wall.” In the middle was an open square which was to
the town what the _atrium_ was to the house,—the common ground, where
public worship was held, announcements made, and public affairs social or
religious carried on. Here was the beehive hut with the sacred fire, and
all other temples or public buildings there might be would open on this
square. The line of encircling houses made a sort of inner defense line,
and even if any stranger could have climbed the wall for purposes of
robbery or spying, it would have been hard for him to pass the houses
without being found out.
This was the ancient way in which all the towns of this race were built.
As the towns increased in size, other gates were opened, and streets laid
out, but always after the same general plan. And as a family never stayed
indoors when it was possible to work or play in the open air, so the
colonists did not stay inside their wall when they could go out on the
common land and make it fruitful. Their descendants are seldom contented
to live inside walls and streets, where they can have no land of their
own. They find homes outside, where they can have land to dig up and plant
and tend and watch, season after season,—and in the thousands of years
since they began to plant and to reap, they have gone almost everywhere in
the world.
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