POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
103 
rubbing the timber with smooth coral and sand. One 
hundred and thirty-three windows or apertures^ furnished 
wdth sliding shutters, admit both light and air, and 
twenty-nine doors afford ingress and egress to the con¬ 
gregation. The building was covered with the leaves of 
the pandanus, enclosed with a strong and neat, low 
aumoa^ or boarded fence and the area within the en¬ 
closure was filled with basaltic pebbles, or broken coral. 
The roof was too low, and the wddth and elevation of the 
building too disproportioned to its length, to allow of 
its appearing either stupendous or magnificent. 
The interior of this spacious structure was at once 
singular and striking. The bottom was covered in the 
native fashion with long grass, and, with the exception 
of a small space around each pulpit, was filled with 
plain, but substantial forms or benches. The rafters 
were bound with curiously-braided cord, coloured in 
native dyes, or covered nearly to the top of the roof 
with finely-woven matting, made of the white bark of 
the purau, or hibiscus, and often presenting a chequered 
mixture of opposite colours, by no means unpleasing 
to the eye. The end of the matting usually hung 
down from the upper part of the rafter three, six, or 
nine feet, and terminated in a fine broad fringe or 
border. 
The most singular circumstance, however, connected 
with the interior of the Royal Mission Chapel, is the 
number of pulpits. There are no fewer than three. 
They are nearly two hundred and sixty feet apart, but 
without any partition between. The east and west 
pulpits are about a hundred feet from the correspond¬ 
ing extremities of the chapel. They are substantially 
built, and though destitute of any thing very elegant 
