Mats are also plaited in breadths, and the breadths are stitched
together, side by side. Or a thicker kind of mat may be made by taking a
wisp of straw and working it in the same way in which straw beehives are
constructed. Straw is worked more easily after being damped and beaten
with a mallet.
Malay hitch.--I know no better name for the wonderfully simple way (shown
in the figure) of attaching together wisps of straw, rods, laths, reeds,
planks, poles, or anything of the kind, into a secure and flexible mat;
the sails used in the far East are made in this way, and the moveable
decks of vessels are made of bamboos, joined together with a similar but
rather more complicated stitch.
[Sketch of fastening].
I may remark that soldiers might be trained to a great deal of hutting
practice in a very inexpensive way, if they were drilled at putting
together huts, whose roofs and walls were made of planks lashed together
by this simple hitch, and whose supports were short scaffolding poles
planted in deep holes, dug, as explained in the chapter on "Wells," with
the hand and a small stick. The poles, planks, and cords might be used
over and over again for an indefinite time. Further, bedsteads could be
made in a similar way, by short cross-planks lashed together, and resting
on a framework of horizontal poles, lashed to uprights planted in the
ground.
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