He decided to do so.
Five rough cottages had meanwhile been constructed for the use of the commissioners, the lumber for them being sawed by hand on the ground.

Boards had been nailed to frames as rapidly as they fell from the logs, and had shrunk to such an extent that a reasonably expert marksman might almost have thrown a cat by the tail through any one of the houses.

At night they looked like the old-fashioned perforated tin lanterns, leaking light in a thousand places.

These were the luxurious homes provided for the high officials of the government of which so much has been said! We paid for them an annual rental amounting to ten per cent of their cost, which had of course been excessively high on account of the necessity of packing everything used in them, except the lumber, up the Naguilian trail.
However, we were in no frame of mind to be critical.

We had put in three years of killing hard work, labouring seven days in the week, and keeping hours such as to arouse a feeling little short of horror among old British and other foreign residents.