176 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
In addition to the oval and the oblong house, 
they often had the fare pora , the fare ran, and 
the buhapa , or other temporary dwellings, for en¬ 
campments during the period of war, or when 
journeying among the mountains; and their 
farau vaa , or canoe houses, which were large, 
and built with care ; a number of what they call 
oa were planted at unequal distances on both 
sides of the rafter and post, which being one piece 
of timber, tended to strengthen the building. 
The floor of their dwellings was covered with 
long dried grass, which, although comfortable 
when first laid down, was not often changed, and, 
from the moisture occasioned by the water spilled 
at meals and other times, was frequently much 
worse than the naked sand or soil would have been. 
Their door was an ingenious contrivance, being 
usually a light trellis-frame of bamboo-cane, 
suspended by a number of braided thongs, and 
attached to a long cane in the upper part of the 
inside of the wall-plate—the thongs sliding back¬ 
wards and forwards like the rings of a curtain, 
whenever it was opened or closed. Many of their 
houses are erected within their enclosures or plan¬ 
tations, but they generally stand on the shore, or 
by the wayside. 
Every chief of rank, or person of what in Tahiti 
would be termed respectability, has an enclosure 
round his dwelling, leaving a space of ten or twenty 
feet width withinside. This court is often kept 
clean, sometimes spread over with dry grass, but 
generally covered with black basaltic pebbles, or 
anaana, beautifully white fragments of coral. The 
aumoa is a neat and durable fence, about four 
feet high; the upright pieces are tenoned into a 
polished rail along the top, or surrounded with the 
