124 



The Ancient Haivaiian House. 



implements and the orange of tlie gourd containers with the deeper colors of the umeke 

 struck no discordant note. It is useless to say that if it had no ej-e would have been 

 offended in the dimly lighted interior; almost all the furniture was used out of doors 

 and onl}^ stored within ; but whether placed hy the brookside under the trees, in the 

 lanai, or piled up on the gray stone platform around, or at least in front of the house, 

 there was not a shining tin pan or kettle, nor a vilely decorated bit of crockerj' (as so 



FIG. lOO. POI MAKING OUT OF DOORS. A SCENE AT IIALAWA, MOLOKAI, IN x888. 



often in modern degenerate times) to offend good taste ; everything harmonized as 

 commonly with the uncorrupted children of the simple life. 



The universal out-of-door life in the fine climate of Hawaii kept the house clean 

 and permitted the use of a floor covering of mats of fine texture; much better these 

 than the rushes strewn upon the floors of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. These mats have 

 already been described in the publications of this Museum,''^ and it need onl}' be repeated 

 here that in the better houses the actual floor was covered with several layers of mats, 

 sometimes all of pandanus leaf but in fineness increasing from the bottom la3'er, at 

 other times the lower ones were of pandanus and the upper one of niakaloa^ a fine rush of 

 which the best and most durable Hawaiian mats were made. On the general coarser mat 

 covering of the floor was often placed the bed or Jiikice^ a strucflure of mats interleaved 



"Hawiiiian Mat and Basket Weaving. Memoirs ii, pt. i, 1906. 



[308] 



