Having covered in my building, I was next to finish and close the walls of it; the skeleton of these was composed of sticks, crossing one another checker-wise and tied together; to fill up the voids, I wove upon them the longest and most pliable twigs of the underwood I could find, leaving only a doorway on one side, between two stems of a tree which, dividing in the trunk at about two feet from the ground, grew from thence, for the rest of its height, as if the branches were a couple of trees a little distance from one another, which made a sort of stile-way to my room. When this was all done, I tempered up some earth by the lake-side, and mixing it to a due consistence with mud, which I took from the lake, applied it as a plastering in this manner: I divided it into pieces, which I rolled up of the size of a foot-ball; these lumps I stuck close by one another on the lattice, pressing them very hard with my hands, which forced part of them quite through the small twigs, and then I smoothed both sides with the back of my saw, to about the thickness of five or six inches; so that by this means I had a wall round my new apartment a foot thick. This plaster-work cost me some time and a great deal of labour, as I had a full mile to go to the lake for every load of stuff, and could carry but little at once, it was so heavy; but there was neither water for tempering, nor proper earth to make it with any nearer. At last, however, I completed my building in every respect but a door, and for this I was forced to use the lid of my sea chest; which indeed I would have chosen not to apply that way, but I had nothing else that would, do; and there was, however, this conveniency, that it had hinges ready fixed thereon. I now began to enjoy myself in my new habitation, like the absolute and sole lord of the country, for I had neither seen man nor beast since my arrival, save a few animals in the trees like our squirrels, and some water-rats about the lake; but there were several strange kinds of birds I had never before seen, both on the lake and in the woods.