Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/285

 Rh a piece cut out behind, so that all that the child doth falls from him, and he is never dirty. The head or top of the board is round, and there is a hole through the top of it for a string to be passed through, so that when the women tire of holding them, or have a mind to work, they hang the board to the limb of a tree, or to a pin in a post for that purpose, and there the children swing about and divert themselves, out of the reach of any thing that may hurt them. They are kept in this way till nearly two years old, which I believe is the reason they are all so straight, and so few of them lame or odd-shaped. Their houses are pretty large, they have no garrets, and no other light than the door, and that which comes from the hole in the top of the house which is to let out the smoke. They make their fires always in the middle of the house; the chief of their household goods is a pot and some wooden dishes and trays, which they make themselves; they seldom have any thing to sit upon, but squat upon the ground; they have small divisions in their houses to sleep in, which they make of mats made of bullrushes; they have bedsteads, raised about two feet from the ground, upon which they lay bear and deer skins, and all the covering they have is a blanket. These people have no sort of tame creatures, but live entirely upon their hunting and the corn which their wives cultivate. They live as lazily and miserably as any people in the world.

Between the town and the river, upon the river side, there are several little huts built with wattles, in the form of an oven, with a small door in one end of it; these wattles are plastered without side very closely with clay, they are big enough to hold a man, and are called sweating-houses. When they have any sickness, they get ten or twelve pebble stones