Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
posts so that the floor was four and a half feet above the ground, and the highest part of the
ridge only five feet above the floor. As I am six feet and an inch in my stockings, I looked at
this with some dismay; but finding that the other houses were much further from water,
were dreadfully dirty, and were crowded with people, I at once accepted the little one, and
determined to make the best of it. At first I thought of taking out the floor, which would
leave it high enough to walk in and out without stooping; but then there would not be room
enough, so I left it just as it was, had it thoroughly cleaned out, and brought up my baggage.
The upper story I used for sleeping in, and for a store-room. In the lower part (which was
quite open all round) I fixed up a small table, arranged my boxes, put up hanging-shelves,
laid a mat on the ground with my wicker-chair upon it, hung up another mat on the wind-
ward side, and then found that, by bending double and carefully creeping in, I could sit on
my chair with my head just clear of the ceiling. Here I lived pretty comfortably for six
weeks, taking all my meals and doing all my work at my little table, to and from which I had
to creep in a semi-horizontal position a dozen times a day; and, after a few severe knocks on
the head by suddenly rising from my chair, learnt to accommodate myself to circumstances.
We put up a little sloping cooking-hut outside, and a bench on which my lads could skin
their birds. At night I went up to my little loft, they spread their mats on the floor below, and
we none of us grumbled at our lodgings.
