236 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND cuap. x 
with the bark of trees on the inside, and many have either 
over the door or somewhere in the house a plank covered 
with their carving, which they seem to value much 
as we do a picture, placing it always as conspicuously 
as possible. All these houses have the door at one end; 
and near it is a square hole which serves as a window 
or probably in winter time more as a chimney; for then 
they light a fire at the end where this door and window 
are placed. The side walls and roof project generally eighteen 
inches or two feet beyond the end wall, making a kind 
of porch, where are benches on which the people of the 
house often sit. Within is a square place fenced off with 
either boards or stones from the rest, in the middle 
of which they can make a fire; the sides of the house are 
thickly laid with straw, on which they sleep. As for furni- 
ture, they are not much troubled with it; one chest com- 
monly contains all their riches, consisting of tools, cloths, 
arms, and a few feathers to stick into their hair; their 
gourds or baskets made of bark, which serve them to keep 
fresh water, their provision baskets, and the hammers with 
which they beat their fern roots, are generally left without 
the door. 
Mean and low as these houses are, they most perfectly 
resist all inclemencies of the weather, and answer con- 
sequently the purposes of mere shelter as well as larger 
ones would do. The people, I believe, spend little of the day 
in them (except maybe in winter); the porch seems to 
be the place for work, and those who have not room there 
must sit upon a stone, or on the ground in the neighbourhood. 
Some few families of the better sort have a kind of court- 
yard, the walls of which are made of poles and hay, ten or 
twelve feet high, and which, as their families are large, encloses 
three or four houses. But I must not forget the ruins, or 
rather frame of a house (for it had never been finished), 
which I saw at Tolaga, as it was so much superior in size 
to anything of the kind we have met with in any other 
part of the land. It was 30 feet in length, 15 in breadth, and 
12 high; the sides of it were ornamented with many broad 
