ve to each
planter who was leaving his house as many nails as the house was
estimated to have in its frame, provided the owner would not burn the
house down.

Some years later, when boards could be readily obtained, the favorite
dwelling-place in the South was a framed building with a great stone or
log-and-clay chimney at either end. The house was usually set on sills
resting on the ground. The partitions were sometimes covered with a
thick layer of mud which dried into a sort of plaster and was
whitewashed. The roofs were covered with cypress shingles.

Hammond wrote of these houses in 1656, in his _Leah and Rachel_,
"Pleasant in their building, and contrived delightfull; the rooms large,
daubed and whitelimed, glazed and flowered; and if not glazed windows,
shutters made pretty and convenient."

When prosperity and wealth came through the speedily profitable crops of
tobacco, the houses improved. The home-lot or yard of the Southern
planters showed a pleasant group of buildings, which would seem the most
cheerful home of the colonies, only that all dearly earned homes are
cheerful to their owners. There was not only the spacious mansion house
for the planter with its pleasant porch, but separate buildings in which
were a kitchen, cabins for the negro servants and the overseer, a
stable, barn, coach-house, hen-house, smoke-house, dove-cote, and
milk-room. In many yards a tall pole with a toy house at top was
erected; in this bird-house bee-martins built their nests, and by
bravely disconcerting the attacks of hawks and crows, and noisily
notifying the family and servants of the approach of the enemy, thus
served as a guardian for the domestic poultry, whose home stood close
under this protection. There was seldom an ice-house. The only means for
the preservation of meats in hot weather was by water constantly pouring
into and through a box house erected over the spring that flowed near
the house. Sometimes a brew-house was also found in the yard, for making
home-brewed beer, and a tool-house for storing tools and farm
implements. Some farms had a cider-mill, but this was not in the house
yard. Often there was a spinning-house where servants could spin flax
and wool. This usually had one room containing a hand-loom on which
coarse bagging could be woven, and homespun for the use of the negroes.
A very beautiful example of a splendid and comfortable Southern mansion
such as was built by wealthy planters in the middle