Alicroi/csiaii Houses. 



47 



serves for ventilation, and the easy removal of rubbish. Above this is another gallery 

 with a diminished opening in the centre, the floor of the attic store room. This is 

 well ventilated at each gable, one, indeed being left open. There is a double ridge- 

 pole as iu the Hawaiian house. 



Kusaie. — From the low islands of the Gilbert archipelago we turn to the high 

 volcanic islands that appear here and there in Micronesia. Conditions having changed, 

 the housebuilders have planned iu other ways. The possession of stone (utterly want- 

 ing in the coral islands), again 

 suggests the platform as a good 

 house foundation, and the struc- 

 ture gaining in dignity, we find 

 the houses of the chiefs and 

 well-to-do men exhibiting some 

 architeAural features that we 

 have not hitherto seen in our 

 rapid sketch of Pacific house- 

 building : as we go west we shall 

 see more, and have perhaps all 

 that the "stick and thatch" 

 house can show. 



In this Museum is a care- 

 fully made model of a Kusaian 

 house (Fig. 41) belonging to a 

 chief, which presents a square 

 strudlure of which the saddle 

 roof is the prominent feature. 

 The walls of the house are, as 

 usual, low and the framework is 

 of squared timbers without cross bracing, the interspaces closed, not with thatch, but 

 with neatly made mats of reeds closely bound together with sinnet, a light and cleanly 

 method. These mats are colored white with lime made from coral, left in the natural 

 color, or decorated with sennit. The four sides have each a small central door. The 

 palm-thatched roof has the peculiar form shown in the figure, and the gable ends, partly 

 open for ventilation, seem to be the most decorated portion of the building. Fig. 42 

 shows more of the detail, but the sennit patterns in red and black on a white ground 

 should be seen in their fresh color to be justly appreciated. There is a lightness, 



[231] 



FIG. 41. MODKI, OF A KUSAIAN CHIEF'S HOUSE. 



