66 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
comparatively clean and comfortable. The temporary 
roof of thatch was often pervious to the rays of the 
sun, and the drops of the frequently descending shower. 
In these cabins, parents, children, dogs, and frequently 
pigs and fowls, passed the night, and the greater part 
of the day. The houses of the chiefs were better built, 
and more capacious. The roofs generally impervious, 
and the sides frequently enclosed with straight white 
poles of the hibiscus tree. Their interior, however, 
was but little adapted to promote domestic comfort. 
The earthen floor was usually covered with long grass. 
This, by being repeatedly trodden under foot, became 
dry, broken, and filled with dust, furnishing also a 
resort for vermin, which generally swarmed the floors 
in such numbers, as to become intolerable. In these 
houses the people took their meals, sitting in circles on 
the grass-spread floor. Here, the fresh water used in 
washing their hands, the cocoa-nut water which was 
their frequent beverage, and the sea-water in which they 
dipped their food, was often spilt. Moisture induced 
decay, and although over these parts of the floor they 
often spread a little fresh grass, yet many places in the 
native houses frequently resembled a stable, or a stable- 
yard, more than any thing else. 
In the drier parts of the house, along each side, the 
inmates slept at night. However large the building 
might be, there were no partitions or skreens. Some of 
their houses were two hundred feet long, and on the 
floor, hundreds have, at times, lain down promiscuously 
to sleep. They slept on mats manufactured with palm- 
leaves, spread on the ground. These mats were gene¬ 
rally rolled up like a sailor’s hammock in the morning, 
and spread out at night. The chief and his wife usually 
