Their homes were commonly built of felled timber or of
rough-hewn stone, solid, low, stocky buildings, usually about twenty
by forty feet or thereabouts in size, with a single doorway and very
few windows. The roofs were steep-pitched, with a dormer window or two
thrust out on either side, the eaves projecting well over the walls in
such manner as to give the structures a half-bungalow appearance. With
almost religious punctuality the habitants whitewashed the outside of
their walls every spring, so that from the river the country houses
looked trim and neat at all seasons. Between the river and the uplands
ran the roadway, close to which the habitants set their conspicuous
dwellings with only in rare cases a grass plot or shade tree at the
door. In winter they bore the full blast of the winds that drove
across the expanse of frozen stream in front of them; in summer the
hot sun blazed relentlessly upon the low roofs. As each house stood
but a few rods from its neighbor on either side, the colony thus
took on the appearance of one long, straggling, village street. The
habitant liked to be near his fellows, partly for his own safety
against marauding redskins, but chiefly because the colony was at best
a lonely place in the long cold season when there was little for any
one to do.
Behind each house was a small addition used as a storeroom. Not far
away were the barn and the stable, built always of untrimmed logs, the
intervening chinks securely filled with clay or mortar.
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