DWELLINGS. 59 



12 to 15 feet, height 10 to 12 feet. Since there are no means of ad- 

 mitting light except by the door, the interiors are very dark, 

 insomuch that on entering one of these houses from the bright 

 sunlight the eyes require some time before they can see at all. In 

 the out-lying hamlets in the interior of these islands, the houses 

 are often smaller and more rudely constructed ; and the owner 

 supplies the place of a door by placing a couple of large plantain 

 leaves or a branch of a cocoa-nut palm before the entrance. 

 Many of these small hamlets are only occupied during the plant- 

 ing season. 



There is a far greater difference in size between the dwellings of 

 the chiefs and those of the ordinary natives than exists in the 

 eastern islands of the group, a distinction which might have been 

 expected on account of the greater power of the chiefs of Bougain- 

 ville Straits. Gorai, the powerful Shortland chief, has appropriated 

 to himself more than an acre of ground on which stand the several 

 buildings required for the accommodation of his numerous wives, 

 children, and dependents. Its precincts are tabooed to the ordinary 

 native ; but the old chief is always ready to extend to the white man 

 a privilege which he denies to his own people. His own residence 

 when we first met him, had no great pretensions in size or appear- 

 ance, measuring 40 by 20 feet in length and breadth, and possessing 

 a very dingy inteiior from the absence of any opening except the 

 entrance to admit light. There was, however, a larger and better 

 constructed building situated near his own for the accommodation 

 of his female establishment. It measured 60 by 30 by 20 feet in 

 length, breadth, and height ; and was subsequently appropriated by 

 the chief for his own use. 



The residence of Mule, the Treasury chief, was one of the largest 

 native edifices that I saw in the Solomon Group. It is a gable- 

 roofed building, measuring about 80 feet in length, 50 feet in 

 breadth, and 25 to 30 feet in height. The front of the house, 

 which is at one of the ends of the building, has a singular appear- 

 ance from the central part or body of the building, being advanced 

 several feet beyond the sides, a style which is imitated in some 

 of the smaller houses of the village. Its interior is very im- 

 perfectly lighted by small apertures in the walls. I should here 

 refer to the large and neatly built house of the powerful chief 

 of Simbo, who, contrary to the usual practice, prefers light to dark- 

 ness in his residence. 



