Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/437

1770 am inclined to believe this, as I remember a dead buffalo lying in one of the principal thoroughfares for more than a week, until it was at last carried away by a flood.

The houses are in general large and well built, and conveniently enough contrived for the climate. The greater part of the ground-floor is always laid out in one large room with a door to the street and another to the yard, both which generally stand open. Below is the ground-plan of one. In this plan a is the front door, b, the back door, c, a room where the master of the house does his business, d, a court to give light to the rooms as well as increase the draught, and e, the stairs for going upstairs, where the rooms are generally large though few in number. Such, in general, are their town houses, differing in size very much, and sometimes in shape; the principles, however, on which they are built are universally the same, two doors opposite each other, and one or more courts between them to cause a draught, which they do in an eminent degree, as well as dividing the room into alcoves, in one of which the family dine, while the female slaves (who on no occasion sit anywhere else) work in another. Showy, however, as these large rooms are to the stranger on his first seeing them, he is soon sensible of the small amount of furniture which is universal in all of them. The same quantity of furniture is sufficient for them as is necessary for our smaller rooms in Europe, as in those we entertain fully as many guests at a time as is ever done in these; consequently the chairs, which are spread at even distances from each other, are not very easily collected into a circle if four or five visitors arrive at once.

Public buildings they have several, most of them old and executed in rather a clumsy taste. Their new church, how-