128 



The Anciciil Hawaiian House. 



reduce to fibre the foreigner's clothing in their primitive process of washing by beat- 

 ing the wet fabrics on a flat stone. 



As there were no mosquitoes on the Hawaiian Islands before 1827, the old natives 

 had no need of mosquito nettings so indispensible in the southern islands of the Pacific, 

 and the tainaniu of the Samoan was uot known on Hawaii in the "good old times". 

 Sleep was often broken to go to the poi nmeke'''' and satisfy their frequent hunger. 

 In the da}' time the kapa moe were carefully folded and jjut aside as were the mat beds 

 of the Samoaus. The author can bear witness to the great comfort and restfulness of 

 this old Hawaiian mat bed and pillow in a new and clean house, and it is uo wonder 

 that modern Hawaiians who 

 have frame houses after the 

 foreign st3de and bedsteads 

 and other foreign furniture, 

 still prefer to sleep on their 

 mat bed under the cumber- 

 some foreign bedstead. Once 

 the author, in passing the 

 night in such a house in a 

 fine four-poster with mosquito 

 nettings, was awakened at da}-- 

 break by a slight noise and 

 saw his host and hostess crawling carefully out from beneath the bedstead, where 

 they had comfortably passed the night. 



When foreign customs began to be observed, partitions were made temporaril}' in 

 the one room of a native house by sheets of kapa hung on cords. When traveling here in 

 the early sixties with. ladies this convenience was generally offered by our obliging hosts; 

 often this was the sole exception to the auticpie /iiodns vivendi, and yet it made the little 

 one-roomed house seem very foreign to have this fence rather than partition stretched 

 from wall to wall. It destroyed the extreme sociability of the old Hawaiian way.. 



Before we turn from the subject of bed and its use, we may describe a custom 

 rather than the apparatus, that to old residents seems almost a part of the native 

 house; and yet today the articles I am about to describe (Fig. 105) are hard to find, 

 and not many have been preserved in museums. If Morpheus or his Hawaiian equiva- 

 lent refused to be propitious, and sleep was coy, the old natives had a soporific always 

 sure and never harmful. 



LAAU KUI KAPA. 



^'Poi umeke^the bread basket. Poi was the paste made from the cooked root of the kalo, and was the staff 

 of life to the Hawaiian. Its manufacture and modifications wiU be described in the chapter on the food and cookery 

 of the Hawaiians. I •? 12 I 



