FORM OF THE HUTS. lGl 



became good friends. It was high water, and we 

 passed over the reef in our boat, and landed close 

 to a large group of huts. Ten men waited to receive 

 us here, two or three elderly women crawling off into 

 the bush, where the younger women and children 

 had previously hidden themselves. The men received 

 us most cordially, though with much clamour and 

 gesticulation ; and the others having landed from 

 the canoe, led us between the huts to a clear 

 open space at the back of them, shaded by cocoa- 

 nuts and other trees, and which seemed the place 

 of public meeting of the village. 



The huts were by far the neatest and best 

 erections of the kind we had yet seen. Each one 

 occupied a quadrangular space, six to eight feet 

 wide, and from ten to fifteen feet long. They had 

 gable-shaped roofs, eight feet high in the centre, 

 and sloping on each side nearly to the ground. 

 The frame of the house was made of bamboo, and 

 thickly covered or thatched with grass and palm- 

 leaves ; the front and back walls were also made of 

 small bamboo sticks, upright and fastened close 

 together, the front wall having a small triangular 

 opening for a door, over which hung loose strips of 

 palm leaf. The door looked into a little court- 

 yard, of about ten feet square, in front of the house, 

 strongly fenced with stout posts and stakes, inter- 

 laced with palm leaves and young bamboos, and 

 accessible only by a very narrow opening between 

 two of the strongest posts. In this court-yard was 



VOL. I. M 



