96 THE HOVA HOUSE 



There is frequently another window at the north end of the 

 house, and often one also in the north gable. The material 

 used always to be the hard red clay found all over the central 

 provinces ; and this is still largely used, although sun-dried 

 bricks are supplanting the old style of building. This clay, 

 after being mixed with water, is kneaded by being trampled over 

 thoroughly, and is then laid in courses of about a foot to eighteen 

 inches in height, and about the same in thickness. Each layer 

 is allowed to become hard and firm before the next one is set, 

 and it is well beaten on both sides as it dries. If properly laid 

 and of good material, the cracks are not very large when the 

 clay is dry, and are filled up ; and it makes a very substantial 

 and durable walling, quite as much, and more so, as the majority 

 of cheap brick houses in England. The boundary walls of the 

 compounds are also made of the same hard clay ; and it is 

 remarkable how many years such material will last without 

 much damage, although exposed almost daily, for four or five 

 months every year, to the heavy rains of the wet season. (I 

 know walls which had been built for several years before I 

 saw them first forty-three years ago, and yet they seem little 

 altered since that time.) 



The houses of the upper classes and richer people used to be 

 built of timber framework, the walls being of thick upright 

 planks, which are grooved at the edge, a tenon of the tough 

 anivona palm bark being inserted so as to hold them together. 

 Two or three lengths of the same fibrous substance were also 

 passed through each plank longitudinally at different heights 

 from the ground, so as to bind them all firmly together round 

 the house. The accompanying drawing will show more clearly 

 than any verbal description the details of the structure of a 

 Hova trdno-kotona, as this style of wooden house is called (no 

 such houses are built nowadays ; and very few of them 

 remain ; the use of brick, sun-dried and burnt, has entirely 

 superseded them). The roof in both clay and timber houses 

 does not depend for its stability on the walls only, but is mainly 

 supported by three tall posts, which are let into the ground for 

 some depth and carry the ridge-piece. One of these posts is in 

 the centre, and one is at each end, close to the walls inside the 

 house. This is a wise provision, as the roofs are generally of high 

 pitch, and in violent winds would need much more support than 



