THE CENTRAL APARTMENT. — THE ROOF, 
519 
Some houses have no further internal divisions : one of this 
kind is represented in the engraving at the end of the chapter ; 
where it may be seen that an additional wall or skreen is built up 
within the doorway, for the purpose of making this sleeping-place 
either darker, or more secure. 
Others have a small inner a2)artment which occupies the centre 
of the building, as shown in the 9th Plate. This, I was informed, 
is used as a winter sleeping-place ; otherwise, it may be supposed to 
be intended as the bed-room for the parents, while the outer apart- 
ment is for the children. 
To comprehend clearly the domestic arrangements of these 
people, it must be borne in mind that every individual, with very 
few exceptions, enters the state of marriage as soon as he arrives at 
a proper age, and then lives in a house of his own ; consequently the 
parents have the care only of the younger children. 
This inner or central apartment is frequently built in the shape 
of a cone, or of a haif-ellipsis, the point of which reaches up to the 
height of tlie roof which it serves to support and strengthen. In 
other instances, as in the Plate, its form is cylindrical ; and this ap- 
peared to be an improved construction. The xvalls of this, as of all 
the others, are formed of stout upright stakes or posts, the interstices 
of which are filled up with smaller branches and twigs, and the 
whole plastered, and entirely covered, with prepared clay, so as to 
give the appearance of a smooth wall. The floor of the house is 
neatly made of the same clay or composition, and kept always 
smooth and clean. In the largest houses, the height in the centre is 
about nine or ten feet, and under the eaves, four or five. 
The roof is in the shape of a depressed cone, the sides of which 
form an angle always greater than ninety degrees and most com- 
monly a hundred and twenty ; as may be observed in the 5th and 
6th Plates, where the figure and angle of the different roofs are 
exactly those of the houses from which they were drawn. It is 
constructed of rough poles, or branches, bound together generally 
with acacia-bark, and meeting at the centre or top. Over these, sticks 
