THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. ^ 127 





or oars until picked up by the other boat. ~'The principal 

 part of the inhabitants, omitting the monkeys, were gathered 

 on the beach to welcome us. The Spanish-Indian dialect 

 was incomprehensible to most of us; yet we read in the 

 people's faces that they were right glad to see us, and in 

 their signs that fruit was plentiful, good, and cheap. They 

 at once invited us to their houses to rest, and a few steps 

 up the beach brought us to the dwellings, which we entered 

 by climbing up short ladders and through a trap-door in 

 the floor. 



The houses are of the simplest construction, but are adapt- 

 ed to the climate and the habits of the people. They are 

 detached, and built on a number of straight posts firmly 

 planted in the earth, the cross-beams, sills, roof-plates, and 

 rafters being made of bamboo, lashed neatly and with sail- 

 or-like precision by neatly-plaited sennit, or braided cords. 

 The thatched roofs are admirably made out of a variety of 

 the cabbage-palm. This plume-like foliage is composed of 

 a stout midrib eight or ten feet long, with long, narrow 

 leaflets,, closely arranged in opposite pairs, and so sharply 

 tui-ned up at their edges that they form gutters, which dis- 

 charge all the water falling on thera from the pointed ends. 

 The roof formed this way is open to the circulation of air, 

 but impervious to the rain and the heat of a tropical sun. 

 Siding and flooring boards are obtained by simply running 

 a knife along one side of a bamboo and spreading it out flat ; 

 this process leaves a net-work of cracks, which afford ven- 

 tilation and apertures through which all the dirt passes out. 

 The floor so made is elevated about uine feet from the 

 earth, the posts supporting the house being capped with 

 rawhide, smeared on the under side with adhesive gums. 

 Thus the houses are secure against the inroads of snakes, 

 scorpions, centipedes, ants, spiders, and other creeping and 

 crawling drawbacks to perfect enjoyment in the tropics. 



