Now that we know how to make doors and door-latches, locks, bolts, and bars, we may busy ourselves with building an American log cabin. It is all well enough to build our shacks and shanties and camps of logs with the bark on them, but, when one wishes to build a log cabin, one wants a house that will last. Abraham Lincoln's log cabin is still in existence, but it was built of logs with no bark on them. There is a two-story log house still standing in Dayton, O.; it is said to have been built before the town was there; but there is no bark on the logs. Bark holds moisture and moisture creates decay by inviting fibrous and threadlike cousins of the toadstool to grow on the damp wood and work their way into its substance. The bark also shelters all sorts of boring insects and the boring insects make holes through the logs which admit the rain and in the end cause decay, so that the first thing to remember is to peel the logs of which you propose to build the cabin. There is now, or was lately, a log cabin on Hempstead Plains, L. I., near the road leading from Mineola to Manhassett; it is supposed to have been built when the first white settlers began to arrive on Long Island, but this was what was known as a "blockhouse," a small fort. In 1906 Mr. I. P. Sapington said: "I think that I am the only man now living who helped build General Grant's log cabin." Grant's house was what is popularly known in the South as a "saddle-bag" log house, or, as the old Southwestern settlers called it, a "two-pen," the pens being two enclosures with a wide passageway or gallery between them, one roof extending over both pens and the gallery.
General Grant was not afraid of work, and, like a good scout, was always willing to help a neighbor. He had a team of big horses, a gray and a bay, and the loads of cord-wood he hauled to St. Louis were so big that they are still talked of by the old settlers. In the summer of 1854 Grant started his log cabin, and all his neighbors turned in to help him build his house.
American Log House
The American log house differs from the Canadian log house principally in the shape of the roof. Our old settlers made steep gambrel roofs to shed the rain.
"Gambrel! Gambrel? Let me beg
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg;
First great angle above the hoof,
That's the gambrel, hence the gambrel roof."
The Canadians put very flat roofs on their log cabins, usually composed of logs laid over the rafters, making them strong enough to support the heavy weight of snow. The American log cabins, as a rule, are built in a milder climate, and the flat sod roof is peculiar to our Northern boundary and the hot, arid parts of our country. We build the chimneys outside of our log cabins because, as the old settlers would say, "thar's more room out thar" (see Figs. [271], [273]).
One-Pen Cabin
[Fig. 229] is a one-pen cabin. To build it we first snake our logs to a skid near the site of our proposed cabin ([Fig. 167]), from which we can roll our logs to our house as we need them. Lay out the corners and square them ([Fig. 180]); notch the logs with a rounded or U-shaped notch ([Fig. 165]). Remember that all the logs should be two or three feet longer than the walls of the proposed building, but the notches must be the same distance apart in order to make even walls. The protruding ends of the logs may be allowed to stick out as they happen to come, no matter how irregular they may be, until the cabin is erected; then with a two-handed saw and a boy at each end they can be trimmed off evenly, thus giving a neat finish to the house.
[Fig. 229.] [Fig. 230.] [Fig. 231.] [Fig. 232.] [Fig. 233.] [Fig. 234.]
