HOUSE-BUILDING. 
321 
or twelve feet wide, while the houses of the chiefs 
are from forty to seventy feet long. Their houses 
are generally separate from each other; even in 
their most populous villages, however near the 
houses may be, they are always distinct buildings. 
Although there are professed house-carpenters 
who excel in framing, and others who are taught 
to finish the comers of the house and ridge of 
the roof, which but few understand, yet, m ge¬ 
neral, every man erects his own house. If it be 
of a middling or large size, this, to an individual 
or a family, is a formidable undertaking, as they 
have to cut down the trees in the mountains, and 
bring the wood from six to ten miles on their 
shoulders \yith great labour, gather the leaves or 
grass, braid the cinet, &c. before they can even 
begin to build. 
But when a chief wants a house, he requires 
the labour of all who hold lands under him ; and 
we have often been surprised at the despatch with 
which a house is sometimes built. We have 
known the natives come with their materials in 
the morning, put up the frame of a middle-sized 
house in one day, cover it in the next, and on the 
third day return to their lands. Each division 
of people has a part of the house allotted by the 
chief, in proportion to its number; and it is no 
unusual thing to see upwards of a hundred men 
at a time working on one house. 
A good house, such as they build for the chiefs, 
will keep out the wind and rain, and last from 
seven to ten years. But, in general, they do not 
last more than five years; and those which they 
are hired to build for foreigners, not much more 
than half that time. In less than twelve months 
after my own grass-house was built, the rain came 
iv. y 
