Page:The Swiss Family Robinson, In Words of One Syllable.djvu/87

Rh At the end of the plain we came to the brow of a high hill, from which the eye fell on a view the like of which we had not yet seen. Trees of all kinds grew on the sides of the hill, and a clear stream ran through the plain at its base, and shone bright in the rays of the sun.

We said at once that this should be the site of our new farm. Close by we found a group of trees, the trunks of which, as they stood, would do for the main props of the house.

I had long had a mind to build a boat, and here I at last came on a tree that would suit. Fritz and I went for a mile or two in search of what we could find, and by the time we came back my wife had put up our tent for the night. We then all sat down to sup, and went to rest on beds made of the bags of the white down that we brought from the trees on the plain.

The next day we rose at dawn. The trees which were to form the frame of our farm house stood on a piece of land eight yards long by five wide. I made a deep cut in each of the trunks, ten feet from the ground, and put up cross beams to form a roof, on which we laid some bark in such a way that the rain would run off.

We were hard at work for some days at the Farm House. The walls we built of thin laths and long reeds, wove close for six feet from the ground, but the rest we