50 



The Attcient Hawaiian House. 



might occasion, each of them had a bamboo frame or shutter, interwoven as the sides of the house 

 were, which sliding on bamboo rods, were easily slipt on one side when anybody wanted to go in or out. 

 On the top of the upright sides beams were laid across from whence sprang the roof, which was 

 pointed like our barns the whole inside being clear ; this made their houses within very lofty and 

 airy: the outside of the roof was thatched very thick and close with bamboos or palm-leaves. This 

 was the general form of their houses ; some of which were from sixty to eighty feet in length, but 

 these were appropriated to public uses, such as meetings of business, or festivity; at other times they 

 served the natives to assemble in and chat 

 together, where the women usually brought 

 their work and joined in the conversation. 

 Those that were properly domestic habita- 

 tions, were the same both in shape and 

 texture, though less in dimension. It was 

 remarked that the family kept on one side 

 of the central fire-place, and the servants 

 on the other. 



From the same author we learn 

 that the islanders had earthen vessels 

 for boiling their yams, etc., bambu 

 joints for water btickets, adzes of 

 shell {Tridacna gigas) including 

 the reversible form known from New 

 Guinea to Hawaii (see these Memoirs, 

 i, p. 419, fig. 85, pi. Ix); tortoise-shell 

 dishes and fish-hooks; knives of pearl 

 shell as well as bambu. Their cords 

 and nets were made of coconut fibre, 

 they pinned their house frame to- 

 gether, an East Indian or Asiatic 

 fashion, although pins were used in 

 Maori houses, and in parts other than 

 the main frame in Hawaii, instead of using the Pol^mesian method of t^'ing with sennit. 

 The almost universal bambu floor of Asiatic cottages, is found in occasional use. 



An interesting variation in the walls of the thatched house is shown in Fig. 43, 

 where the braided palm leaves are much closer knit than is usual in the Pol3'nesian 

 use of this leaf. The girl of Nine (Savage Id.) in the foreground is holding a leaf of 

 the api', a gigantic form of kalo. 



New Guinea. — Sailing south from the Pelew group we come to the great island 

 that we call New Guinea because there is no colledlive native name. Hostile tribes, many 

 of them praAically unknown to this day, speaking dialedls mutually unintelligible, most 



[234] 



FIG. 43. WOVEN WALLS OF NIUE HOUSE. 



