390 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES, 
The size, structure, and conveniency of the Tahitian 
houses, such as Wallis found, and such as are here 
described, exhibit no small degree of invention, skill, 
and attention to comfort, and shew that the natives were 
even then far removed from a state of barbarism. They 
also warranted the inference that they were not deficient 
in capacity for improvement, and that, with better models 
and tuition, they would improve in the cultivation of 
every art of civilized life, especially when they should 
be put in the possession of iron and iron tools, as those 
they had heretofore used were rude stone adzes, or chisels 
of bone. 
It is, however, proper to remark, that although all 
were capable of building good native houses, and many 
erected comfortable dwellings, yet great numbers, from 
indolence or want of tools, reared only temporary and 
wretched huts, as unsightly in the midst of the beau¬ 
tiful landscape, as they were unwholesome and com¬ 
fortless to their abject inhabitants. 
When our printing-ofiice was finished, as the purau 
branches afforded but an indifferent shelter from the 
rain and wind, the sides of the printing-office were 
boarded, and one or two glass windows introduced; 
probably the first ever seen in Eimeo. The floor was 
covered partly with the trunks of trees split in two^ 
and partly paved with stone. In searching for suitable 
stones, we pulled down the remaining ruins of one 
or two maraes in the neighbourhood, and, finding 
among them a number of smooth and level-surfaced 
basaltic stones, we were happy to remove them from the 
temple, and fix them in the pavement of the printing- 
office floor; thus appropriating them to a purpose very 
different indeed from that for which they were primarily 
