Pelriv Islands Houses. 49 



wanting in the Maori carved house, very attractive in the warmer climate of Kusaie. 

 To these houses, which are of limited size, there are no internal beams and the ridge- 

 pole is supported by the triangles shown in the figure of the gable end. The floor is of 

 slats, after the style of the East Indian bambu struc^lures, and while light and cleanly, 

 is hard for a novice to walk upon. Of the interior furnishing I have no particulars. 



Ponape. — In Ponape the houses are built upon platforms as in the Marquesas, 

 Hawaii and elsewhere : and these substrudlures are four or five feet high, built of 

 basaltic blocks or slabs of coral limestone. The house-walls are low ; the beams of the 

 framework squared, and the interspaces filled with panels or curtains composed of 

 reeds or cane not more than half an inch thick, bound together neatly by coconut 

 fibre: the roof is closely thatched with palm leaf, the eaves projecting so as to shade 

 the walls. The narrow doors are a marked feature of these rectangular, shed-like 

 dwellings, which are seldom more than twenty feet high to the ridges. 



I pass over the stone struClures on the shores of Ponape, already referred to, 

 because there does not seem sufficient evidence that they were built for human habita- 

 tion, or if they were, have been more than foundation platforms for ordinary houses. 



Pelew Islands. — The story of the happy island as edited by Keate^' from the 

 journals of Captain Wilson and his officers, piClures an Arcadia seldom met with and 

 assuredly not to be found in the Pacific at the present day. The houses of the amiable 

 people therein depiCled are thus described: 



Their houses were raised about three feet from the ground, placed on large stones, which ap- 

 peared as if cut from the quarry, being thick and oblong ; on these pedestals the foundation beams 

 laid, from whence spring the upright supports of their sides, which were crossed by other timbers 

 grooved together and fastened by woodeu pins ; the intermediate spaces closely filled up with bam- 

 boos and palm-leaves, which they plaited so closely and artificially as to keep their habitations warm 

 and exclude all wet ; and their being raised from the ground preserved them from any humidity. 

 The floors were in general made of very thick plank, a space of an inch or two being left between 

 many of them. But in some of the houses they were composed of large bamboos split, which being 

 perpetually trodden over, rendered them very slippery. The interior part of the house was without 

 any division, the whole forming one great room. In general the fire-place stood about the middle 

 of it, sunk lower than the floor, with no timber below it, the whole space beneath being filled up with 

 hard rubbish ; but in the larger buildings, where they held their public meetings, they had a fire- 

 place at each end. Their fires were in common but small, being mostly used to boil their yams, and 

 to keep up a little flame at night to clear away the dews, and smoke the mosquitoes. Their windows 

 came to the level of the floor, and served both for doors and windows, having stepping-stones at all 

 of them to enter by. To prevent any inconvenience from wind or rain, which so many apertures 



^'An Account of the Pelew Islands situated in the Western part of the Pacific Ocean. Composed from the 

 Journals and Communications of Captain Henry Wilson and some of his officers, who, in .\ugust, 1783, were there 

 shipwrecked, in the Antelope, a Packet belonging to the Honourable East India Company, by George Keate, Esq., 

 F. R. S. and S. A. London, 1788. 4to. (Second Edition.) 



Memoirs B. P. B. Museum. Vol. II, No. 3.-4. r2 "^ '^ I 



