In the designing of the bungalow two essentials were supreme, cost and
comfort--minimum of cost, maximum of comfort. Aught else was as nothing.
There was no alignment to obey, no rigid rules and regulations as to
style and material. The surroundings being our own, we had compassion on
them, neither offering them insult with pretentious prettiness nor
domineering over them with vain assumption and display. Low walls,
unaspiring roof, and sheltering veranda, so contrived as to create, not
tickling, fidgety draughts but smooth currents, "so full as seem asleep,"
to flush each room so sweetly and softly that no perceptible difference
between the air under the roof and of the forest is at any time
perceptible.

Since the kitchen (as necessary here as elsewhere) is not only of my own
design but nearly every part of the construction absolutely the work of
my unaided, inexperienced hands, I shall describe it in detail--not
because it presents features provocative of pride, but because the ideas
it embodies may be worth the consideration of others similarly situated
who want a substantial, smokeless, dry, convenient appurtenance to their
dwelling. Two contrary conditions had to be considered--the hostility of
white ants to buildings of wood, and the necessity for raising the floor
but slightly above the level of the ground.

A bloodwood-tree, tall, straight, and slim, was felled. It provided three
logs--two each 15 feet long and one 13 feet. From another tree another
13-foot log was sawn. All the sapwood was adzed off; the ends were
"checked" so that they would interlock. Far too weighty to lift, the logs
were toilfully transported inch by inch on rollers with a crowbar as a
lever. Duly packed up with stones and levelled, they formed the
foundations, but prior to setting them a bed of home-made asphalt