etails of bog ken.]

It is not necessary to have straight and even rafters, because the humps,
bumps, and hollows caused by crooked sticks are concealed by the mattress
of straw. Take a bundle of thatch in your hands, squeeze it together, and
place it so that the butt ends project about three inches beyond the floor
(_A_, Fig. 66); tie the thatch closely to the lower rafter and the one
next above it, using for the purpose twine, marlin, raffia, or
well-twisted white hickory bark. This first row should be thus tied near
both ends to prevent the wind from getting under it and lifting it up.
Next put on another row of wisps of thatch over the first and the butt
ends come even with the first, but tie this one to the third row of
rafters not shown in diagram. The butts of the third row of thatch (_B_,
Fig. 66) should be about nine inches up on the front rows; put this on as
before and proceed the same way with _C_, _D_, _E_, and _F_, Fig. 66,
until the roof is completed. The thatch should be ten or twelve inches
thick for a permanent hut but need not be so for a temporary shed.

As there is no comb to this roof the top must be protected where the
thatches from each side join, and to do this fasten a thatch over the top
and bind it on both sides but not in the middle, so that it covers the
meeting of the thatches on both sides of the shack; this top piece should
be stitched or bound on with wire if you have it, or fastened with willow
withe or even wisps of straw if you are an expert. A house, twenty by
thirty feet, made of material found on the place and thatched with straw
costs the builder only fifty cents for nails and four days' work for two
persons. A good thatched roof will last as long as a modern shingle roof,
for in olden days when shingles were good and split out of blocks, not
sawed, and were well seasoned before using, they were not expected to last
much over fifteen years; a well-made thatched roof will last fifteen or
twenty years.

Fig. 70.

[Illustration: Snow-shoe foundation for bog ken.]

But a real bog ken is one that is built over boggy or marshy places too
soft to support an ordinary structure. To overcome this difficulty
required considerable study and experiment, but at length the author hit
upon a simple plan which has proved effective. If you wish to build a duck
hunter's camp on the soft meadows, or for any other reason you desire a
camp on treacherous, boggy ground, you may build one by first m