The Red Jacket
The Red Jacket continues the suggestion offered by the Christopher Gist and extends the side walls all the way across to the wind-shield, and the latter now becomes the true end of the log shack. The side walls and end wall are built up from the top of the shack to form a big, wide log chimney under which the open camp-fire is built on the ground. The Red Jacket is roofed with bark in the same manner as the New Brunswick and Christopher Gist and occupies the important position of the missing link between the true log cabin or log house and the rude log camp of the hunter. If you will look at [Fig. 184], the open-faced log camp; then [Fig. 190], the camp with the wind-shield in front of it; then [Fig. 191] with the wind-shield enclosed but still open at the top; then [192] where the wind-shield has turned into a fireplace with a chimney; then Figs. [271] and [273], showing the ends of the real log cabin, you will have all the steps in the growth or evolution which has produced the American log house.
XXXII
CABIN DOORS AND DOOR-LATCHES, THUMB-LATCHES AND FOOT LATCHES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM
Perhaps my reader has noticed that, although many of the descriptions of how to build the shacks, shanties, shelters, camps, sheds, tilts, and so forth are given with somewhat minute details, little or nothing has been said regarding the doors and door-latches. Of course we have no doors on the open Adirondack camp, but we have passed the open camps now and are well into cabin work, and all cabins have some sort of a door. All doors have, or should have, some sort of a door-latch, so the doors and door-latches have been saved for this place in the book, where they are sandwiched between the log cabin and the log houses proper, which is probably the best place for them. The "gummers" who collect spruce gum in the north woods and the trappers and all of the hermit class of woodsmen frequently come home to their little shack with their hands full of traps or with game on their shoulders, and consequently they want to have a door which may be opened without the necessity of dropping their load, and so they use a foot latch.
Foot Latch
One of the simplest of the foot latches consists of a piece of wood cut out by the aid of axe and hunting-knife to the form shown by [Fig. 199]; a hole in the door cut for that purpose admits the flattened and notched end and upon the inside it fits the round log sill. The owner of the shack, when reaching home, steps upon the foot latch ([Fig. 199]), which lifts up the catch (on the inside) and allows the door to swing open.
