J812. 
DESCRIPTION OF KRAMORFS HOUSE. 
445 
the front of the principal dwelling-house or that occupied by the chief- 
tain himself and his family. The inner apartment, which constituted 
the centre or main body of the building, was about nine feet high, 
and as much in diameter. The roof, thatched with long grass, pro- 
jected four feet beyond the outer wall, and the eaves were supported 
five feet from the ground by unhewn posts of mokaala wood, but 
from which the bark had been entirely taken off. These posts were 
connected at bottom, in the manner best explained by the engraving, 
by a low wall six inches thick, and carefully plastered with a compo- 
sition of sand or loam and the manure from the cattle-pounds. This 
formed, with the outer wall of the building, a kind of veranda about 
ten feet in length, in which the family usually sit in the day time, 
and generally the whole evening. Three girls were sitting here at 
this time, busy in grinding and preparing red ochre for painting 
their bodies. This substance, however, is used chiefly by the men. 
At one end of this veranda was a small and shallow bason hollowed 
out of the floor and rendered more capacious by an elevated margin, 
for the purpose of occasionally receiving a Jire whenever the coldness 
of the air rendered it necessary. None of the houses had any 
window or aperture for giving light to the inner room : the door, 
which was scarcely eighteen inches wide and five feet high, was the 
only opening. The outer fence, which might better be named a wall 
than a hedge, enclosed the whole at a distance of seven feet, and was 
formed of straight sticks or long twigs of the mohdka tree, (or tar- 
chonanthus) compactly bound together. The front-court, in which 
we were assembled, was divided from the back yard by a transverse, 
and similar, wall. The back part of the house, which corresponded 
with the front veranda, was wholly filled with large corn-jars some 
four, and others five, feet high, and three in width, built of the same 
materials as the wall of the house, and raised six or twelve inches 
above the ground. 
The bystanders appeared exceedingly pleased at my admiring 
and examining the buildings ; and more especially, when I told 
them and Kramori, that I should come again another day to learn 
