COLONIAL HOMES.

The Indians, seated in their long community houses around their wood fires, ranging over their hunting ground seeking fresh meat, or stealthily creeping through the forest hoping to surprise some human enemy, at last found that they could no longer have this entire continent to themselves. More than four hundred years ago Europeans discovered the "New World" and began to explore it. More than three hundred years ago the Spaniards conquered the Indians in Mexico and made a settlement in Florida. Nearly three hundred years ago the French began to build homes in Canada, the Dutch in New York, and the English in Virginia and New England.

These white men, with their wives and children, crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the small vessels of those days, and built villages and cleared the land for farms. Their settlements were generally near the seacoast or the great rivers. The pioneers were thus nearer one another, and could the more readily hasten to each other's assistance in case of need.

The newcomers were not alike in appearance or habits. The French had different customs from the Spaniards. They not only spoke a different language, but they wore different kinds of clothes, tilled the soil in a different way, and lived in houses of different styles. The Dutch were quite unlike the English. Then, again, the life of the English in Virginia was different from life in New England: in the former colony some of the settlers were wealthy, owned large plantations, and lived at long distances from one another; in the latter the colonists had more nearly equal possessions, occupied smaller farms, and lived close together.

Although the colonists thus had differing habits and customs, in many respects they were much alike. They had come to a country where everything was new. No mills nor factories were run by the streams; no shops made clothing or farming tools; no stores sold furniture or groceries. Everything that the colonists needed must be either brought across the ocean or roughly made by themselves. Of course only the rich could afford the expense of bringing heavy articles three thousand miles in sailing vessels; therefore a large part of what the colonists wore or ate or used for furniture or buildings was rude and of home manufacture. A description of the mode of life in one section of the country will give something of an idea of how the colonists lived in other sections.

Almost the first thing that was necessary for the colonist to do, as soon as he had determined where he was to live, was to build his house; he began at once to fell the trees. The axe was one of the most important of his possessions and he soon learned to use it with great skill. If he needed his house immediately he usually built it of rough, unsplit logs, filling the spaces with clay and covering the roof with thatch.

There is a story told of a log house which was built in the early part of one winter. The trees were cut when their trunks were frozen, and were laid in proper position to form the sides of the cabin. The stone chimney was built, and the house was ready. Day after day the great fireplace sent out its heat into the single room, until the sap in the logs was melted and little shoots with tender leaves began to form, which in time, at the ends of the logs nearest the fire, grew into long twigs. The logs had remained frozen on the outside, but had thawed within—a pleasant suggestion of the cheer and comfort found in a well warmed house.

If the newcomer had neighbors who could shelter his family for a time, he would split the logs and make a house somewhat tighter and better protected from cold and storm. After a time lumber mills were built and the logs were sawed into planks and boards. Many of the earliest New England houses contained but one room with an attic. The house was entered directly from out-of-doors, and was lighted by windows set with very small panes of glass or oiled paper. In one corner was the staircase, which sometimes was merely a ladder or perhaps a few cleats nailed on the framework. The furniture was meagre and most of it rudely made.

Can we see any improvement in this rough cottage over the Indian long house? It was more permanent; it was tighter and warmer; it was the abode of one family; it was a real home. In another respect the comfort of the log cabin was greatly increased: it had an enclosed fireplace and a chimney.

Some years ago fireplaces were seldom seen in our dwellings. In many of the old houses, in which the fireplaces were as old as the houses themselves, they were never used and were either boarded up or carefully screened from view. But more recently they have come into use again, and now seldom is a well arranged house built without one or more open fireplaces. We are then—most of us—acquainted with this small opening in the side or the corner of the room, in which small logs of wood burn upon the andirons or a bed of coals upon the grate. However, this modern grate or hearth is very unlike the huge fireplace of one and two centuries ago.

In the houses in which your great-grandmother and her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother lived the fireplace was not confined to a corner of the room, nor did it burn sticks fifteen or eighteen inches long. In the oldest house now standing in Rhode Island the fireplace was nearly ten feet long and about four feet in depth. Its back and sides were of stone, nearly two feet thick, and the chimney, thirteen feet by six, did not begin to narrow, as it went upward, until it reached the roof. This fireplace made an excellent play-house when the fire was out, and children found great delight in watching the stars from their seat in the chimney corner.

At first this open fireplace, with the fire burning in the centre, was the only means for cooking which our ancestors possessed. When they were able to build larger houses, with two, four, or eight rooms, even two stories high, they still had the great hearths; not one alone, but one in each of the principal rooms, and sometimes in the chambers. As time went on, stone or brick ovens were built by the side of the fireplaces, and frequently tin or "Dutch" ovens were brought across the ocean and used in case of need. Let us look into one of these old houses on a Saturday, or "baking day," and notice some of the pleasures and inconveniences of cooking in olden time.

When Mother Brown rises at half past four in the morning she dresses quickly, for the coals, which had been carefully covered up, have given out little heat during the bitter, cold night. Before she can wash her hands and face she must start up the fire, for all the water in the house is frozen. She carefully rakes off the ashes from the coals which are still "alive," deftly lays on them a few shavings and pieces of bark, and, when they begin to burn brightly, piles upon them small and then larger sticks of wood. Now Father Brown and John, the hired man, who have come in from doing the chores, lift on to the fire one of the six foot logs, three or four feet in circumference, which have been previously brought in. Then Mother Brown calls the children. Ruth, the eldest, is already nearly dressed; Mehitable, just in her teens, is soon ready; while Polly, "the baby," nearly eight years old, finds it hard work to crawl out from between the sheets. The boys are even harder to rouse, for mother has to call Nathaniel, aged eleven, three times before he appears, and Joseph, two years younger, is slower still.

We will not stop to notice the breakfast, which is eaten, and the dishes washed, long before the sun rises. Now the outside door opens and in comes the old white horse, hauling a great backlog. John unhitches the chain and rolls the log upon the fire. This done, the horse goes out at the door opposite the one he entered. Father Brown brings in several armfuls of brush and heavier sticks, and throws them down near the fireplace.

As this is baking day, the oven must be made ready The great brick oven, one side of which makes also one side of the fireplace, is filled with the brush and light wood, which is soon burning briskly. For an hour the fire is kept up, new wood being thrown in when necessary; then it is allowed to go out. Meanwhile Mother Brown and Ruth are busy—mixing and rolling, sifting rye and Indian meal, stirring up eggs, and adding milk and butter. By the time the oven is heated the cooks are ready to use it; and Mehitable rakes out the coals and ashes with a long stick, shaped like a shepherd's crook.

First the pans of "rye 'n' Injun" bread are laid in the oven, away back at the farther end. Then the "pandowdy" or great apple pudding and the "Injun" pudding are placed in front of the bread. While the bread and the puddings are baking, two tin ovens are brought in and prepared for use. These Dutch ovens are mere sheets of metal curved around into more than half a circle, with the opening placed toward the fire. A long iron rod runs through from side to side of the oven on which the meat for roast is to be spitted. Mother Brown removes one of the spits and thrusts it through a piece of beef, and in the same way spits a fat turkey on the other. Here is work for little Polly, upon whom rests the task of frequently turning the spit so that the meat is evenly roasted.

Later in the day, when the bread is baked, the oven is heated again and filled with pies—apple, mince, squash, and pumpkin. By the time these are baked the day is done. The coals on the hearth are covered with ashes and the tired cooks gladly retire for the night.

On other days meat is boiled in pots that are hung from the crane, a long, swinging, iron rod which reaches directly over the fire or may be turned out into the room. Upon the hearth potatoes are baked, corn is roasted, and other primitive forms of cooking are used. We have made a long step from the Indian's open fire and his simple cooking to the brick and tin ovens and the metal pots and kettles of our ancestors; but is it not a longer step to the coal, oil, and gas ranges of to-day?