As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary
of life, though there are instances of men having done without it
for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says
that "the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he
puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on
the snow ... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of
one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep
thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But,
probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the
convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which
phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house
more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and
occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our
thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of
the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in
the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In
the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a
row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so
many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and
robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space
such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but
though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by
daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the
torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had
not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam
and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other
clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of
warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race,
some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter.