Book Description

'Shelters, Shacks and Shanties' is a guidebook into building the aforementioned structures, written by D. C. Beard. As this book is written for boys of all ages, it has been divided under two general heads, 'The Tomahawk Camps' and 'The Axe Camps,' that is, camps which may be built with no tool but a hatchet, and camps that will need the aid of an ax. The smallest boys can build some of the simple shelters and the older boys can build the more difficult ones. The reader may, if he likes, begin with the first of the book, build his way through it, and graduate by building the log houses; in doing this he will be closely following the history of the human race, because ever since our arboreal ancestors with prehensile toes scampered among the branches of the pre-glacial forests and built nestlike shelters in the trees, men have made themselves shacks for a temporary refuge. The shacks, sheds, shanties, and shelters described in the following pages are, all of them, similar to those used by the people on this continent or suggested by the ones in use and are typically American; and the designs are suited to the arctics, the tropics, and temperate climes; also to the plains, the mountains, the desert, the bog, and even the water.