[Fig. 142] shows a barrel dugout. It is made by digging a place for it in the bank and, after the floor is levelled off, setting rows of barrels around the foundation, filling these barrels with sand, gravel, or dirt, then placing another row on top of the first, leaving spaces for a window and a door, after which the walls are roofed with logs and covered with sod, in the same manner as the ones previously described. The dirt is next filled around the sides, except at the window opening, as shown by [Fig. 142]. A barrel also does duty as a chimney.
Shacks like this are used by homesteaders, miners, trappers, and hunters; in fact, these people use any sort of material they have at hand. When a mining-camp is near by the freight wagons are constantly bringing in supplies, and these supplies are done up in packages of some kind. Boards are frequently worth more a yard than silk, or were in the olden days, and so the home builders used other material. They built themselves houses of discarded beer bottles, of kerosene cans, of packing-boxes, of any and every thing. Usually these houses were dugouts, as is the barrel one shown in [Fig. 142.] In the big-tree country they not infrequently made a house of a hollow stump of a large redwood, and one stone-mason hollowed out a huge bowlder for his dwelling; but such shacks belong among the freak shelters. The barrel one, however, being the more practical and one that can be used almost anywhere where timber is scarce but where goods are transported in barrels, deserves a place here among our shacks, shelters, and shanties.
XXII
THE BARABARA
The houses along the coast of the Bering Sea are called barabaras, but the ones that we are going to build now are in form almost identical with the Pawnee hogan (Figs. [42] and [43]), the real difference being in the peculiar log work of the barabara in place of the teepee-like rafters of the said hogan.
To build a barabara you will need eight short posts for the outside wall and six or eight longer posts for the inside supports ([Fig. 145]). The outside posts should stand about three feet above the ground after they have been planted in the holes dug for the purpose. The top of the posts should be cut wedge-shaped, as shown by [Fig. 144], in order to fit in the notch B ([Fig. 144]). The cross logs, where they cross each other, should be notched like those of a log cabin (Figs. [162] and [165]) or flattened at the points of contact.
Plant your first four posts for the front of your barabara in a line, two posts for the corners B and E ([Fig. 145] A), and two at the middle of the line C and D for door-jambs (plan, [Fig. 145] A). The tops of these posts should be level with each other so that if a straight log is placed over them the log will lie level. Next plant the two side-posts F and G ([Fig. 145] A) at equal distances from the two front posts and make them a few feet farther apart than are the front posts. The sketch of the framework is drawn in very steep perspective, that is, it is made as if the spectator was on a hill looking down upon it. It is drawn in this manner so as to better show the construction, but the location of the posts may be seen in the small plan. Next set the two back posts, H and K, and place them much closer together, so that the bottom frame when the rails are on the post will be very near the shape of a boy's hexagonal kite.
