2 The Ancient Hawaiian House. 



of New Zealand, aud the ephemeral houses of sticks and grass, plain as possible in the 

 Hawaiian group, pidluresque in parts of Micronesia and fantastic in New Guinea. 



The temptation is strong to explore and stud}' more fully the curious stone 

 remains found in many places in the Pacific from Rapanui in the southeast to Tinian 

 in the northwest, and although the evidence that these were the work of the ancestors 

 of the races at present found in the great ocean seems preponderant, they need claim 

 only a passing glance here for thej', together with the stone temples of Hawaii, belong 

 to religious or monumental construdlions, and we are to limit this excursus to those 

 materials that ma}- be explanatory of the origin or aifinit}- of the Hawaiian dwelling. 



In Central x'Vmerica we find wonderful structures of stone buried in forests almost 

 as dense as the veil which shrouds their origin or uses, but we recognize that the 

 houses of the people who built and used these temples, palaces, monasteries or charnel 

 houses, and who must have dwelt in the neighborhood, were constru6led of more perish- 

 able material and have left no record. In Egypt the same is true ; the houses of the 

 gods and of the dead are of durable masonry and material, syenite, limestone, alabaster, 

 while the hoiises of the people, even the palaces of the Pharaohs were flimsil}- con- 

 strucfted of wood and have perished save in the pidlured stories on the walls of the 

 tombs. The American record in the wonderful painted books which doubtless would 

 have given miich light on Maj-a domestic architedlure was mostly destroyed bj' the 

 fanatic priests who swarmed in the invading armies, — deadly foes to knowledge, — may 

 their souls repent the evil the}- did ! Everywhere the same thing is true of domestic 

 architedlure in primitive times and in lands with a mild climate; if the people did not 

 dwell in tents they certainly had houses of not much greater durabilit}-. 



In the Pacific we still have "samples" of the hou.ses which probabl}- have not 

 changed much from the earliest times, but the lumber and building methods of the 

 foreigner are rapidly driving out even these samples from those groi:ps most open to 

 outside influence. On the Hawaiian Islands fortj' j'ears ago grass houses were ver}' 

 common outside the larger towns, and even in Honolulu they were found on some of 

 the principal streets. In this town in 1837 they were almost universal as seen in a 

 view of Honohilu drawn b}- the late Edward Bailey from the foot of Punchbowl Hill 

 and engraved at Lahainaluna under the instrudlion of Judge Lorin Andrews (Fig. i). 

 Toda}' we have had to gather into the Bishop Museum an ancient house frame, and 

 the tourist may make the usual circuit of the group and never see an example of a 

 genuine Hawaiian house, although in several places Japanese have built grass houses 

 resembling the native work externall}-. 



The boards and plans of the foreigner result in a cheaper, more convenint, and 

 more durable house than those of the olden style, so the latter are passing and it seems 



[186I 



