GENERAL ACCOUNT HEDLEY. 55 



ridge pole and rafters, is covered by an excellent thatch of 

 pandanus leaves. Sometimes the walls are protected by the 

 same, but more often are enclosed by palm mats swung on cords, 

 which may be raised, lowered, or pushed aside at discretion, and 

 doors or windows are thus formed anywhere caprice directs. 



All small articles, tools, garments, or fishing utensils are 

 usually suspended from the roof or stuck in the thatch. By day 

 the only furniture visible is the usual locked trade box in the 

 corner, but by night the hut is partitioned off into numerous 

 small chambers by the calico mosquito curtain of each single 

 individual or married couple. 



"A house after the usual Samoan fashion just described has 

 but one apartment. It is the common parlour, dining room, &c., 

 by day, and the bedroom of the whole family by night. They do 

 not, however, altogether herd indiscriminately. If you peep into 

 a Samoan house at midnight, you will see five or six low oblong 

 tents pitched (or rather strung up) here and there throughout the 

 house. They are made of native cloth, five feet high, and close 

 all round down to the mat. They shut out the mosquitoes, and 

 enclose a place some eight feet by five ; and these said tent- 

 looking places may be called the bedrooms of the family. Four 

 or five mats laid loosely, the one on the top of the other, form 

 the bed."* 



The Papuan custom of avoiding mosquitoes by sleeping in the 

 smoke seems unknown here. For further particulars about the 

 mosquitoes, the reader is referred to Mr. Rainbow's article on 

 the Entomology of Funafuti. 



A European on entering is always requested to seat himself 

 on a bunk or trade box, and is at once welcomed with a drinking 

 coconut, opened and handed to him by a daughter of the house. 



Artificial light was quite unknown upon Funafuti before the 

 advent of the whites. Mr. O'Brien told me that to bring fire 

 into a dwelling house was most strictly tabued ; he described to 

 me the astonishment of the natives when an early visitor impro- 

 vised a rough lamp from a coconut shell bowl filled with coconut 

 oil. On Niutao, " No fire was kindled at night lest it should pre- 

 vent the gods from coming in a shadowy form with a message."! 

 And on Fakaafu, in the Tokelau Group, Dr. Turner likewise tells 

 us " No fire was allowed to be kindled at night in the houses 

 of the people all the year round. It was sacred to the gods, and 

 so, after sundown they sat and chatted in the dark."J 



* Turner Samoa, 1884, p. 155. 

 t Turner loc. cit., p. 288. 

 JId. Op. cit.,p. 269. 



