While the others were hunting here and there for the gold which it had
been said could be picked up in Virginia as one gathers acorns in the
old world, Captain Smith set about making a house of logs such as would
protect him from the storms of winter as well as from the summer sun.
This he did by laying four logs on the ground in the form of a square,
and so cutting notches in the ends of each that when it was placed on
the top of another, and at right angles with it, the hewn portions would
interlock, one with the other, holding all firmly in place. On top of
these, other huge tree trunks were laid with the same notching of the
ends. It was a vast amount of labor, thus to roll up the heavy logs in
the form of a square until a pen or box had been made as high as a man's
head, and then over that was built a roof of logs fastened together with
wooden pins, or pegs, for iron nails were all too scarce and costly to
be used for such purpose.
When the house had been built thus far, the roof was formed of no more
than four or five logs on which a thatching of grass was to be laid
later, and the ends, in what might be called the "peak of the roof,"
were open to the weather. Then it was that roughly hewn planks, or logs
split into three or four strips, called puncheons, were pegged with
wooden nails on the sides, or ends, where doors or windows were to be
made.
Then the space inside this framework was sawed out, and behold you had a
doorway, or the opening for a window, to be filled in afterward as time
and material with which to work might permit.
After this had been done, the ends under the roof were covered with yet
more logs, sawn to the proper length and pegged together, until, save
for the crevices between the timbers, the whole gave protection against
the weather.
Then came the work of thatching the roof, which was done by the branches
of trees, dried grass, or bark. My master put on first a layer of
branches from which the leaves had been stripped, and over that we laid
coarse grass to the depth of six or eight inches, binding the same down
with small saplings running from one side to the other, to the number
of ten on each slope of the roof. To me was given the task of closing up
the crevices between the logs with mud and grass mixed, and this I did
the better because Nathaniel Peacock worked with me, doing his full
share of the labor.