Читать книгу Dissertation on the Gipseys онлайн

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For their winter huts, they dig holes in the ground, ten or twelve feet deep; the roof is composed of rafters laid across, which are covered with straw and sods: the stable, for the beast which carried the tent in summer, is a shed built at the entrance of the hollow, and closed up with dung and straw. This shed, and a little opening rising above the roof of their subterranean residence, to let out the smoke, are the only marks by which a traveller can distinguish their dwellings. Both in summer and winter, they contrive to have their habitation in the neighbourhood of some village, or city. Their favourite mode of building is against a hillock: the holes in the level ground being only used in cases of necessity, when there is no rising ground near the spot they have chosen to pass the winter on. A Hungarian writer thus describes their method of constructing the second sort of huts: “They first dig a hollow, about a fathom broad, far enough into the hillock to bring their floor on a level with the rest of the plain, in order to form a firm upright wall, for the back of the building. Into the wall they fix a beam, about six feet from, and parallel to, the floor; this beam reaches as far as the intended depth of the house, seldom exceeding seven or eight feet. One end being fast in the wall, the other rests on, and is fixed to, a pillar or post driven into the ground. When that is done, they lay boards, balks, or such other wood as they can find, against it on each side, in form of a pointed roof, which, viewed from a distance, exhibits a front in the shape of an equilateral triangle. The business is finished by covering the whole building with straw, sods, and earth, to secure its inhabitants from the rain, snow, and cold. They always contrive, when they can, to place their edifice so as to front either the rising or mid-day sun; this being the side where the opening is left for a door to go in and out at, which is closed at night, either with a coarse woollen cloth or a few boards.”