Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1893 — Tropical Roofs. [ARTICLE]

Tropical Roofs.

The natives of the interior of Ceylon finish walls and roofs with a paste of slaked lime gluten and alum, which glazes and is so durable that specimens three centuries old are now to be seen. On the Malabar coast the flat bamboo roots are covered with a mixture of cowdung, straw and clay. This is a poor conductor of heat, and not only withstands the heavy rains to a remarkable degree, but keeps the huts cool in hot weather. In Sumatra the native women braid a coarse cloth of palm leaves for the edge and top of the roofs. Many of the old Buddhist temples in India and Ceylon had roofs made out of cut-stone block s , hewed timber, and split bamboo poles. Uneven planks, cut from old and dead palm trees—seldom from living young trees—are much used in the Celebes and Philippines. Sharks’ skins form the roofs of fishermen in the Andaman Islands. The Malays of Malacca, Sumatra and Java have a roofing of attaps, pieces of palm leaf wicker work about three feet by two in size and an inch thick, which are laid like shingles and are practically water-preof. The Arabs of the East Indies make a durable roof paint of slaked lime, blood and cement. Europeans sometimes use old sails—made proof against water, mould, and insects by paraffine and corrosive sublimate—for temporary roofs —rScien '■s ' American.