T?ii)irr''s Samoa. 



15 



The thatch, also, is laid on with great care and taste ; the long dry leaves of the sugar-cane 

 are strung on to pieces of reed five feet long ; thej- are made fast to the reed by overlapping the one 

 end of the leaf, and pinning it with the rib of the cocoa-nut leaflet, run through from leaf to leaf hori- 

 zontally. These reeds, thus fringed with the sugar-cane leaves hanging down three or four feet, are 

 laid on, beginning at the eaves and running up to the ridge pole, each one overlapping its fellow an 

 inch or so, and made fast one by one with cinnet to the inside rods or rafters. Upwards of a hundred 

 of these reeds of thatch will be required for a single row running from the eaves to the ridge pole; 

 then they do another row, and so on all round the house. Two, three, or four thousand of the.se 



FIG. II. S.\,MOAN INTiCRIOK. 



fringed reeds may be required for a good sized house. This thatching if well done will last for seven 

 years. To collect the sugar-cane leaves, and "sew", as it is called, the ends on to the reeds, is the 

 work of the women. An active woman will sew fifty rods in a day, and three men will put up and 

 fa.sten on to the roof of the house some five hundred in a day. For coolness and ventilation nothing 

 beats the thatch. The great drawback is, that iu gales it stands up like a field of corn, and then the 

 rain pours into the house. That, however, may be remedied by a network of cinnet, to keep down 

 the thatch, or by the native plan of covering all in with a layer of heavy cocoa-nut leaves on the 

 approach of a gale. 



These great circular roofs are so constructed that they can be lifted bodily off the posts, and 

 removed anywhere, either b}' hand, or by a raft of canoes. But in removing a house, they generally 

 divide the roof into four parts, viz., the two sides, and the two ends, where there are particular joints 

 left by the carpenters, which can easily be untied, and again fastened. There is not a single nail in 

 the whole building ; all is made fast with cinnet. The arrangement of the houses in a village has 

 no regard whatever to order. You rarely see three houses in a line. Every one puts his house on 

 his little plot of ground just as the shade of the trees, the direction of the wind, the height of the 

 ground, etc., may suit his fancy. 



[199] 



