suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels (or smials as
they called them) were not everywhere to be found; and in the flats
and the low-lying districts the Hobbits, as they multiplied, began to
build above ground. Indeed, even in the hilly regions and the older
villages, such as Hobbiton or Tuckborough, or in the chief township of
the Shire, Michel Delving on the White Downs, there were now many
houses of wood, brick, or stone. These were specially favoured by
millers, smiths, ropers, and cartwrights, and others of that sort; for
even when they had holes to live in. Hobbits had long been accustomed
to build sheds and workshops.
     The habit of building farmhouses and barns was said to have begun
among the inhabitants of the Marish down by the Brandywine. The
Hobbits of that quarter, the Eastfarthing, were rather large and
heavy-legged, and they wore dwarf-boots in muddy weather. But they
were well known to be Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed
was shown by the down that many grew on their chins. No Harfoot or
Fallohide had any trace of a beard. Indeed, the folk of the Marish,
and of Buckland, east of the River, which they afterwards occupied,
came for the most part later into the Shire up from south-away; and
they still had many peculiar names and strange words not found