L841.] DWELLINGS AND CUSTOMS. 397 



projects several feet, as a protection against the weather, — the 

 sides and ends of the houses not being closed in. Like their 

 persons, the houses of the natives are kept quite clean and 

 neat. Their only articles of furniture are a few gourds and 

 cocoa-nut shells, some boxes or buckets cut out of the 

 solid wood and neatly fitted with lids or covers, and large 

 mats woven of pandanus leaves, four feet square, on which 

 they sleep at night, covering themselves, if necessary, with 

 lighter mats made of the same material. They have, also, a 

 reclining stool, or lounge, cut from a solid block of wood, and 

 elevated at one end, by two legs, so as to form an angle of 

 forty-five degrees. 



On Bowditch Island is the house or temple of their god, 

 Tui-Tokelau. It is of the same shape as the private houses, 

 and is from thirty to fifty feet long, and twenty feet high. 

 The roof is concave, and projects some distance at the eaves, 

 where the pandanus leaves that compose the thatching are 

 tied together at intervals, and present a notched or scolloped 

 appearance. The sides and ends are open, with the excep- 

 tion of a low railing, only fifteen inches high. Within, there 

 is an abundance of mats, and rudely fashioned benches carved 

 out of the solid wood ; also a number of gods, or idols, of 

 wood or stone, from ten to fourteen feet high. 



The natives of these islands seem to be ignorant of the uses 

 of fire. They never cook their victuals, but subsist mainly 

 on the fruit of the cocoa and pandanus, with the fish that they 

 capture near the reefs, and in the lagoons, all which are eaten 

 in a raw state. On the larger islands they dig wells in the 

 ground, which are neatly walled up on the inside ; but where 

 the ground is very low, as is the case on Oatafu, they catch 

 fresh water in excavations made in the body of the cocoa-nut 

 trees, on the lee-side, and about two feet from the ground. 



They have both double and single canoes, made of pieces 

 of wood sewed together with sennit, like those of the 

 Samoans, and their paddles are of the same fashion. They 

 have outriggers, likewise, but no sails ; and they ornament 

 their craft with the shells of the cyprece ovula. These canoes 



