In summer a tent is the hottest, and in winter the coldest of domiciles. The “pizie” or “adobie” hut, or, where practicable, the “dugout” are much to be preferred, especially the latter. “Pizie” or “adobie” is simply surface soil kneaded with water and either moulded between boards like concrete, to construct the walls, or made into large sun-dried bricks. Salt water should not be used, as it causes the wall to be affected by every change of weather. A properly constructed house of this material, where the walls are protected by overhanging eaves, is practically everlasting, and some have been standing for centuries. There are buildings of pizie or adobie in Mexico, California, and Australia which are as good as new, although the latter were built nearly a hundred years ago. Adobie dwellings are warm in winter, cool in summer, and clean and healthy if occasionally whitewashed. The dugout is even more simple in construction. A cutting, say ten feet wide, is put into the base of a hill for, say, twelve feet until the back wall is, say, ten feet high, the sides starting from nothing to that height. The front and such portion as is required of the side walls are next constructed of pizie or rough stone, with mud mortar, and the roof either gabled or skillion of bough, grass, or reed thatch, and covered with pizie, over which is sometimes put another thin layer of thatch to prevent the pizie being washed away by heavy rain. Nothing can be more snug and comfortable than such a house, unless the cows, as Mark Twain narrates, make things “monotonous” by persistently tumbling down the chimney. When the Burra copper mines were in full work in South Australia sixty years ago, the banks of the Burra Creek were honeycombed like a rabbit warren with the “dugout” homes of the Cornish miners. The ruins of these old dugouts now extend for miles, and look something like an uncovered Pompeii.[3] [3] This wonderful copper occurrence has lately been revived by the discovery of rich and strong lode formations outside the formerly worked portions. When water is scarce and the tent has to be retained, much can be done to make the camp snug. I occupied a very comfortable camp once, of which my then partner, a Dane, was the architect. We called it “The Bungalow,” and it was constructed as follows: First we set up our tent, 10 ft. by 8 ft., formed of green baize-lined calico, and covered with a well set fly (Fig. 27). Next we put in four substantial forked posts about 10 ft. high and 15 ft. apart, with securely fixed cross pieces, and on the top was laid a rough flat roof of brush thatch; the sides were then treated in the same way, but not so thickly, being merely intended as a breakwind. [Illustration: FIG. 27. CALICO TENT WITH FLY.] The ground plan was as shown in Fig. 28. [Illustration: FIG. 28.]