making a veritable human nest, not easily
discoverable by the uninitiated. So that even
the typical bower of the poets has a real
existence, though not quite in the
conventional form of western imagination. The
Mantchou Tartar builds himself a cage, with
a round roof, like a round tower or a dovecote.
He covers this cage, or wicker basketwork,
with pieces of fulled cloth, leaving a
hole in the middle for the smoke. The Calmuck
Tartars have also a kind of conical cage-like
tent, a perfect frame-work, horizontal bars
and vertical poles, all finally covered up with
coarse woollen felt, and so light that one
camel can carry five or six of them. The
Tuski—a nomadic tribe of Siberia, divided
into the pastoral, or cleanly Tuski, and the
fishing, or dirty—make their huts of whale
ribs and walrus skins. They are chiefly
circular, to prevent snow-drifts, at the gables,
and to offer as few points of resistance as
possible to the fierce north winds. The
walrus skin, sometimes containing seventy or
eighty square feet, is as clear as parchment,
beautifully elastic, and semi-transparent. It
is covered with thick layers of dried grass in
the cold weather, and rein-deer skins hang
as curtains from the roof inside. The chief
has often three or four generations to house
in his one tent; and the way in which space
is economised, by means of hanging shelves,
and wooden vessels scooped out of drift wood,
is very ingenious. These Tuski burn a train-oil
lamp, which gives immense heat, and is
the softest light known, even to eyes cognisant
of wax.

The Samoiedes are also of Siberia: and they
have pyramidal tents covered with bark,
which is again covered with rein-deer skins.
They sometimes have a double layer of skin;
the hairy sides outside, so as to give warmth
within, and repel the rain without. These
skins are in long strips, wound in a spiral
manner round the tent-poles, with a little
hole left at the top for the smoke. The
women here again pitch and arrange the
tents, and do all the domestic work beside;
the men hunting and fishing, and, in a new
encampment, throwing up the snow to about
a foot in depth all round the tent. Other
northern tribes have much the same kind and
form of tent; walrus skin, reindeer skin, and
bark, the chief coverings to be found among
the snow and ice of the Pole.

China harbours land nomads, as well as
her well known wandering water population.
The Mongols, for instance, who live like
the Mautchous, in cages: and vilely filthy
cages too: and the Khalkas, with paintings,
cushions, rugs, and ornaments in their tents,
yet with only a hole dug in the clay in the
centre, for their fireplace. Then the Chinese
army has tents; five feet five inches high, six
feet wide, and fourteen feet long. They are
made with sloping roofs, covered with strong
linen canvas, lined with common blue linen:
each pole is ornamented with an imperial-
shaped iron crown, and each tent contains a
felling axe, a spade, a shovel, a hammer, and
a very curious portable copper camp kettle.
And here the pigtailed braves live and eat
their rats; issuing at intervals to build up
painted canvas fortification, or to try how
some new shield, just issued by the Celestial
war-office, looks at a distance, and when the
Fanquis may be held sure to run, in abject
terror of both.

The Africans have various modes of housing
themselves. The Egyptian Bedouins merely
thrust four sticks into the ground, and hang
a shawl upon them; while the Arabs, near
Tripoli, have "hair houses," as they call
them, of wool and goat's hair; some of them
quite palatial in their dimensions, for tents.
The Braknas, a tribe of Moors to the north
of Senegal, famous for their milk diet and fat
women, have straw or grass huts, capable of
holding forty or fifty people: and the plains
round Timbuctoo are covered with these
straw huts or tents. Other Moors indulge
in conical hair tents, which they carry about
in leathern sacks, and deck inside with mats
and goods. Another tribe, more to the
centre of Africa, makes circular huts of palm
branches; another, stretches a few mats on
stakes, and covers them afterwards with
hides and branches; a third uses branches of
trees, for a framework, then covers them with
mats made of the Dom-palm; and hangs
them round inside with black and white
striped woollen coverlets. "In the time of
the tropical rains, these tents are much
reduced in size by their inmates, who sit in
them like snails in their shells." The Berbers
live in tents covered with coarse wool, or
goat's hair, or with mats woven from the
fibres of a certain root, which the women
spin or twist so closely that it can keep off
the rain. These coverings are dyed black
with copperas. Others have tents like tombs,
or the keel of a ship reversed, protected by
black hair cloths, or mats woven from the
leaves of the palmetto. The Hottentots
make a large arched cage, into which they
must creep on their hands and knees, well
covered by mats made of reeds and the
sword-grass. These mats overlap each other,
like the tiles of a house, so that no rain can
possibly penetrate; the upright laths are
held in their arched position by a few heavy
stones placed on the top, which also force
the poles deeper into the earth. The diameter
of the largest huts is about fourteen feet;
they hold from ten to twelve persons, with
all their worldly gear, beds, food, weapons,
and implements, and have a circular hole for
the fireplace, but they have no chimney, and
the smoke has to find its way out by the
door.

The Red Indians make all sorts of
wigwams: some very simple and others exceedingly
elaborate and handsome. The Mandan
lodge is the largest of all, often from forty
to sixty feet wide; while the Crows cover