8o 



The Ancient Haivaiian House. 



If the sides and roof are of plantain leaf-stalks, and the leaves of the pandanus, or of ti leaves, 

 each leaf is woven around the horizontal sticks, which gives it a neat appearance, resembling a kind 

 of coarse matting on the inside, while the ends of the leaves hang down without. But if they are 

 covered with grass, which is most commonly the case, it is bound up in small bundles, and these are 

 tied to the small sticks along the side of the wall of the house, with cinet or cord. They always 

 begin at the bottom and tie on the grass with the roots upward, and inclined toward the inside, and 

 continue one row above another from the ground to the top of the roof. The roof and sides are 

 always of the same material, except where the latter are of plantain or ti leaves. The corners and 

 ridge are sometimes covered with fern leaves [Fig. 66], with which they can secure these parts better 



FIG. 66. HOUSE IN WHICH KEELIKOLANI DIED AT KAIEUA, HAWAII. 



than with grass, &c. The shell is now finished, and generally, except in the lowne.ss of the sides 

 and steepness of the roof, looks much like a hay-rick, particularly as until recently they never thought 

 of making windows, and had only one aperture, which was the entrance. A large portion of that 

 end of the halau which faces the sea, is usually open. The houses of this kind were probably origi- 

 nally erected for the construction and preservation of canoes, for which purpose they are still some- 

 times used, though frequently occupied as dwellings. In the common dwelling house, the door is 

 frequently on one side. In the old houses the doors are always low. Since foreigners have resided 

 among them, and built houses with doors and windows, the natives have enlarged their doors, though 

 there are yet but few that can be entered without stooping. Some of them also begin to think win- 

 dows a convenience, but they by no means fall in with our ideas of uniformity in the disposition of 

 them. Sometimes we have seen a house forty or fifty feet long, with the door at one end, and a 

 small window at the other, half way up to the top of the roof. Again, we have entered a house of 



[264] 



