A high gable and Gothic window is doubtless a great ornament to a church, but it would be dangerous to build the wall 15ft. higher for that purpose; and it is much better, therefore, to make the end no higher than the sides, and let the roof incline at an angle of 45° instead of having a gable end.
The windows must be small, and it is better to make them lancet-shaped and narrow; if the buttresses are 20ft. apart there may be two windows, 2ft. wide between each. The rafters ought not to come over the windows, even if the wall plates be good, but ought to rest on the solid space between them.
The rafters are half checked at each end to the cross-beam and let into checks on the king-post; thus (Fig. 1) struts to the beam will considerably strengthen them, and if these are fitted into checks nailed on instead of being mortised or half checked in, the strength will not be impaired. Fig. 2 shows more clearly the manner in which the square ends of the rafters abut on the king-post. If it should be desirable to avoid having cross-beams the rafters may be framed as in Fig. 3; but unless this is very substantially done the weight of the roof is apt to expand them and force the walls outward. We, therefore, advise the common form, at least until the assistance of skilled workmen can be procured. The upper part of the king-posts may be a forked branch, and the ridge pole will lie very nicely in this.
Makeshift houses, foundations, and fences.
In extemporising rough frame-houses in dry countries, the foundation is a matter of small importance; generally, when the ground is cleared, a place sufficiently hard and smooth, and a little elevated so that rain may not flood the house, is easily found. But sometimes a foundation must be formed, not only to afford a support to the fabric, but to raise the floor above the influence of damp or of low-lying noxious vapours. We have heard of barges or vessels being grounded and houses built upon them, and have in fact seen instances of this as well as of the deck houses being removed from wrecks and set up, sometimes raised on low walls, forming very comfortable habitations ashore, and of tents being set up as roofs over walls of rough stone. We have heard of the foundations of a house in San Francisco being laid with the 21lb.-sized oblong boxes of tobacco with which the market had been glutted. In Cape Town, when meat was a few halfpence a pound, we have seen bullocks’ heads used as stop-gaps in the fences near Green Point. The cores of bullocks’ horns are not unfrequently used for the same purpose in this country. In Walvisch Bay we saw bags of coarse salt used as part of the foundation of the original wooden shed in which, notwithstanding its lowly appearance, many a traveller has found so hospitable a reception.
We wondered a little at first at the use of such a material on a beach overflowing for miles at every spring tide, but found it was protected from actual contact with the sea by an embankment of sand, supported by posts and planking. Rain would not occur perhaps once in two years, and the fresh water from the Kuisip overspread the flats so rarely that such a contingency was hardly taken into account. The bags and their contents seemed to be in a normal state of dampness, but did not appear to waste in consequence of it.
When more commodious houses were required, the samphire, that formed the only vegetation on the flats, was collected by the Hottentot women, spread in layers alternated with sand well trodden down into it until mounds were formed about 4ft. high. On one of these a store was erected of corrugated iron, and on another the Rhenish missionaries built a wooden house they had brought out in frame, so solid and substantial, as to prove that timber in the land it came from was of far less value than metal or any other material. Perhaps for parties who can afford the carriage, corrugated galvanised iron houses offer as convenient a method as any of obtaining accommodation sufficiently permanent, and yet easily removable. The rigidity imparted by the corrugation could not be attained by any thickening of plain sheets, while scarcely more room is required in packing; for although one sheet of plain iron occupies much less room than one of corrugated, the sheets of the latter fit so closely one upon the other that a dozen or twenty require not much more space than one. Dr. Livingstone took a house of this kind to the Zambesi in 1858; it formed a very efficient shelter for our stores on Expedition Island, but, as we never made any permanent camp beyond the Portuguese town of Tette, it was not again required. The sheets, however, used separately or together in any number according to the weight they were to support, formed excellent bases for tables, beds, settees, as well as benches, raised a few inches from the floor, on which to store such things as we wished to preserve from the white ants.
Buildings of the Portuguese in Africa.