ix or eight inches with rough stones, then an upper layer of smooth
pebbles, then some cocoa-nut leaf mats, and then a layer of finer
matting. Houses of important chiefs are erected on a raised platform
of stones three feet high. In the centre of the house there are two,
and sometimes three, posts or pillars, twenty feet long, sunk three
feet into the ground, and extending to and supporting the ridge pole.
These are the main props of the building. Any _Samson_ or giant
_Tafai_ pulling them away would bring down the whole house. The space
between the rafters is filled up with what they call _ribs_--viz. the
wood of the bread-fruit tree, split up into small pieces, and joined
together so as to form a long rod the thickness of the thumb, running
from the ridge pole down to the eaves. All are kept in their places,
an inch and a half apart, by cross pieces, made fast with cinnet. The
whole of this upper cagelike work looks compact and tidy, and at the
first glance is admired by strangers as being alike novel, ingenious,
and neat. The wood of the bread-fruit tree, of which the greater part
of the best houses are built, is durable, and, if preserved from wet,
will last fifty years.

The thatch also is laid on with great care and taste; the long dry
leaves of the sugar-cane are strung on to pieces of reed five feet
long; they are made fast to the reed by overlapping the one end of
the leaf, and pinning it with the rib of the cocoa-nut leaflet run
through from leaf to leaf horizontally. These reeds, thus fringed with
the sugar-cane leaves hanging down three or four feet, are laid on,
beginning at the eaves and running up to the ridge pole, each one
overlapping its fellow an inch or so, and made fast one by one with
cinnet to the inside rods or rafters. Upwards of a hundred of these
reeds of thatch will be required for a single row running from the
eaves to the ridge pole; then they do another row, and so on all round
the house. Two, three, or four thousand of these fringed reeds may be
required for a good-sized house. This thatching, if well done, will
last for seven years. To collect the sugar-cane leaves, and "sew," as
it is called, the ends on to the reeds, is the work of the women. An
active woman will sew fifty reeds in a day, and three men will put up
and fasten on to the roof of the house some five hundred in a day.
Corrugated iron, shingles, and other contrivances, are being tried by
European residents; but, for coolness