HOUSES OF THE HAKONES. -V 



others unfinished. On reaching the topmost hut, 

 about thirty feet from the ground, I entered, and 

 sat down. Its only furniture was the hay which 

 covered the floor, a spear, a spoon, and a bowl full 

 of locusts. Not having eaten anything that day, 

 and, from the novelty of my situation, not wishing 

 to return immediately to the waggons, I asked a 

 woman who sat at the door, with a babe at her breast, 

 permission to eat. This she granted with pleasure, 

 and soon brought me some locusts in a powdered 

 state. Several more females came from the neigh- 

 bouring roosts, stepping from branch to branch to 

 see the stranger, who was to them as great a curiosity 

 as the tree was to him. I then visited the different 

 abodes, which were on several principal branches. 

 The structure of these houses was very simple. An 

 oblong scaffold, about seven feet wide, is formed of 

 straight sticks. On one end of this platform a 

 small* cone is formed, also of straight sticks, and 

 thatched with grass. A person can nearly stand 

 upright in it; the diameter of the floor is about six 

 feet. The house stands on the end of the oblong, 

 so as to leave a little square space before the door. 

 On the day previous I had passed several villages, 

 some containing forty houses, all built on poles about 

 seven or eight feet from the ground, in the form <>f 

 a circle ; the ascent and descent is by a knotty 

 branch of a tree placed in front of the house. In 

 the centre of the circle there is always a heap of the 

 bones of game they have killed. Such were the 

 domiciles of the impoverished thousands of the 



