Early Housebuilding. 



8i 



equal dimensions, and in some parts of it we have seen an aperture within a foot or a foot and a half 

 of the floor, generally near their sleeping places. This as well as the other, they call a buka 

 makani (wind hole), and assign as a reason for placing it in such a situation, that they sometimes 

 find it close in their houses, and like to have the wind blow on them as they lie on their mats. 



The shell of the house being finished, they proceed to fit up the inside, which is soon accom- 

 plished, as they have neither partitions nor chambers, and, however large the house may be, but one 

 room and one floor. In preparing the latter, they sometimes level the ground, and spread grass 

 over it, which they cover with large mats made of the leaves of the pandanus. But the best floors 

 are those formed with pebbles, or small fragments of lava, which are alwa3's dry, and less likely to 

 be infested with vermin than those covered with grass. 



FIG. 67. HAKAKAU FOR SUSPENDING CAI.ABASHES. 



The size and quality of a dwelling varies according to the rank and means of its possessor, 

 those of the poor people being mere huts, eight or ten feet square, others tvs'enty feet long, and ten 

 or twelve feet wide, while the houses of the chiefs are from forty to seventy feet long. Their houses 

 are generally separate from each other : even in their most populous villages, however near the 

 houses may be, they are always distinct buildings. Although there are professed house-carpenters 

 who excel in framing, and others who are taught to finish the corners of the house and ridge of the 

 roof, which but few understand, yet, in general, every man erects his own house. If it be of a 

 middling or large size, this, to an individual or a family, is a formidable undertaking, as they have 

 to cut down the trees in the mountains, and bring the wood from six to ten miles on their shoulders, 

 gather the leaves or grass, braid the cinet, &c., before they can begin to build. 



But when a chief wants a house he requires the labour of all who hold lauds under him : and 

 we have often been surprised at the dispatch with which a house is built. We have known the natives 

 come with their materials in the morning, put up the frame of a middling-sized house in one daj-, 

 cover it in the next, and on the third return to their lands. Each division of people has a part of the 

 house allotted b)^ the chief, in proportion to its number; and it is no unusual thing to see upwards 

 of a hundred men at a time working on one house. 



Memoirs B. P. B. Mcseum. Vol. II, No. 3.- 



[265] 



