HOUSES OF THE BAKONES. 
27 
others unfinished. On reaching the topmost hut, 
about thirty feet from the ground, I entered, and 
sat down. Its only furniture was the hay which 
covered the floor, a spear, a spoon, and a bowl full 
of locusts. Not having eaten anything that day, 
and, from the novelty of my situation, not wishing 
to return immediately to the waggons, I asked a 
woman who sat at the door, with a babe at her breast, 
permission to eat. This she granted with pleasure, 
and soon brought me some locusts in a powdered 
state. Several more females came from the neigh¬ 
bouring roosts, stepping from branch to branch to 
see the stranger, who was to them as great a curiosity 
as the tree was to him. I then visited the different 
abodes, which were on several principal branches. 
The structure of these houses was very simple. An 
oblong scaffold, about seven feet wide, is formed of 
straight sticks. On one end of this platform a 
small cone is formed, also of straight sticks, and 
thatched with grass. A person can nearly stand 
upright in it; the diameter of the floor is about six 
feet. The house stands on the end of the oblong, 
so as to leave a little square space before the door. 
On the day previous I had passed several villages, 
some containing forty houses, all built on poles about 
seven or eight feet from the ground, in the form of 
a circle ; the ascent and descent is by a knotty 
branch of a tree placed in front of the house. In 
the centre of the circle there is always a heap of the 
bones of game they have killed. Such were the 
domiciles of the impoverished thousands of the 
