CoLENSO. — 0)1 the Maori Baces of New Zealand. 349 



few cases, a person not " sacred " miglit act, yet lie sometimes most incon- 

 veniently became " sacred " by bis doing so ! As a rule, a " sacred " person 

 never toucbed common work or tbings. Tbeir common matters, bowever, 

 were open to all, witb tbis only reservation, — tbat men's work was not done 

 by women, and vice versa. 



13. Tbeir better arcbitecture and building, — bearing in mind tbe non- 

 durability of tbe materials used, — tbougb peculiar, was of first order, and 

 well fitted for tbe people and tbe climate. Tbeir bouses, particularly tbose 

 of tbe principal cbief s, were strongly and neatly built, snug, and often bigbly 

 ornamented, Tbey were cool in summer and warm in winter. Tbe faults 

 of all tbeir bouses were, tbeir being too low, witb excessively low doors, 

 witb eartbern floors, and witbout cbimney or suflicient ventilation. In 

 sbape tbey were generally a parallelogram, witb tbeir walls always sligbtly 

 inclined inwards, witb tbe angle of tbe roof low, and invariably witb tbe one 

 door and one window at tbe sunny end, witbin a pretty large veranda. In 

 size tbey were from one wbicb would contain witb ease a bundred men, to 

 one wbicb would only contain sis. Tbe floors were rarely ever raised above, 

 oftener sunk into, tbe ground. Tbe window sbutter and door, eacb fixed in 

 a substantial and often bigbly carved wooden frame, slid to and fro, and 

 wben closed all was dark witbin. Tbe bouse baving its framework wbolly 

 of totara wood (of wbicb tbe pilasters were often eacb two feet wide, and 

 smootbed by repeated cbippingwitb a stone adze), was built of several coats 

 of bulrusbes, securely fixed witb flax, baving a bandsome ornamental lining 

 of reeds to tbe roof and between tbe wide pilasters, covered outside witb 

 one or more coats of strong tbatcb firmly fixed, and often witb tbe bark 

 of tbe totara pine laid on in large slabs. On tbe large and wide barge- 

 boards, posts, ridgepole, and ends of the veranda, mucb grotesque 

 carving and ornamental work was often displayed ; tbese were mostly 

 coloured red. Tbeir sweet-potato stores were also often elaborately 

 finished. Sometimes tbeir stores were neatly set on bigb posts, wbicb 

 were not unfrequently carved, and were climbed up into by means of a 

 notched pole as a ladder. Their common houses though plain were often 

 very strongly made ; sometimes, bowever, their walls were not more than 

 two feet bigb, with a prodigious roof. No observable order was fol- 

 lowed in placing tbeir houses in a village ; throughout which there 

 were ways of communication in all directions, but no proper streets ; 

 each sub-tribe or family generally enclosed with an inner fence, having 

 around their own bouses apertures for ingress and egress. The outer fence 

 of the village, often composed of whole timber trees set in the ground, 

 without their ba,rk or branches, and from fifteen to twenty or even to thirty 

 feet in height, and strongly secured with transverse timbers cross-lashed to 



