714 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
The houses of the natives are built on the ground, 1 and always close to the shore. 
On Wild Island they are built of a continuous wall and thatch of grass and cocoanut 
leaves or similar material. They are all of an elongate beehive shape, occupying an oval 
area of ground, and thus look somewhat like long haycocks (see PL XXX. ). 
In D’Entrecasteaux Island many of the houses have their walls built up neatly of wood 
cut into billets and piled as firewood s in Europe, and the roofs are similar to those in 
Wild Island. They are supported on two stout posts rising from the foci of the oval 
floor of each house, and by a regular framework of rafters. Shorter posts, placed along 
the walls at intervals, support the roofs at their periphery and the walls. Very often the 
ground is excavated to the depth of a foot or so beneath the house, so that the wall is 
partly of earth, and one has to step down to get into the house. 
The dwelling houses are mostly about 20 to 25 feet long, 10 to 15 feet in height, and 
about 10 feet in breadth. They have a low opening at one or both ends. To the main 
supporting posts of the roof are secured a series of wide horizontal shelves placed one 
above another, and on these food, implements, and weapons are kept ; similar shelves 
are present in the women’s houses. In some of the houses are also bed-places, consisting 
of rough boards fastened against the side posts of the walls on one side, and supported 
by short special posts on the other. Arms and implements are suspended from the posts 
and rafters. The dwelling houses have no further furniture. The posts are sometimes 
carved and painted, and occasionally a human skull is fastened to one, or placed under 
the thatch. Everything about the houses is rough, and there is no neatness as in Fijian 
buildings. 
Besides the dwelling houses there are larger ones, supposed at the time to be temples, 
but in reality, as explained by Baron de Miklucho-Maclay, club houses used for meeting 
and feasting purposes by certain select and exclusive associations of the natives who 
construct them in common for the purpose. These club houses are constructed exactly 
like the dwellings, but larger ; some have carved entrance posts of wood, representing 
male and female figure, and the entrances are closed by a kind of hurdle. The club 
houses will be further described in the sequel. About the houses in the villages, bright- 
red Draccena plants are commonly planted as ornaments, representing the flower garden 
in its most primitive stage. 
The canoes have their bows and sterns low, and simply pointed, and not turned up 
and built so as to form figure-heads, as at Humboldt Bay. Their hulls are formed each 
of the hollowed trunk of a tree, with a single plank built on above it, and a gunwale- 
piece as a finish. The hollowed-out portion has slightly and equally rounded sides, and 
is not flat on one side • and rounded on the other, as in the Caroline Islands. The 
mast is stepped in the bottom of the canoe, just in front of the horizontal outrigger 
1 Jacobs, loc. cit., p. 182, describes as seen by him “several large villages built on piles over the water” on the 
east coast of the main island. Lieut. Saunders, R.N., also saw some pile-dwellings at the islands. 
