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 ade. All the doors and windows were to be on the inside of the square, while in the outer walls were to be no openings except loopholes for muskets; for it was determined to make the village a fort, trusting nothing to the savages. Though the Nacotchtanks were at present friendly, the Massawomeks might come, and Ralph Morton knew that barbarian nature is fickle and inconstant.

The cabins at Jamestown had been thatched with reeds, and thatch was quite a common roofing for English country-houses, but Ralph had seen in the Jamestown conflagration the dangers of such roofs. It was decided to make the roofs of "shakes," or shingles, about three feet long, split from straight-grained timber. A supply of froes had been brought over for splitting shakes. In fact, Ralph's forethought had supplied everything. His experience in logging at Jamestown enabled him to invent a truck for hauling logs. It had two wheels, placed much closer together than those of an ordinary wagon, so as to pass more easily between trees and stumps. The axle was like the drum of a windlass, so that a log could be loaded by drawing it up with a chain wound up by turning the axle with spikes. The chain