pleted.
When a house was finished, and all ready for occupation, they had
their "house-warming," or, as they called it, its _oven consecration_;
and formerly it was the custom to add on to that a night dance, for
the purpose, they said, of "treading down the beetles."

The system of a common interest in each other's property, to which we
have referred, is still clung to by the Samoans with great tenacity.
They feel its advantages when they wish to raise a little. Not only a
house, but also a canoe, a boat, a fine, a dowry, and everything else
requiring an extra effort, is got up in the same way. They consider
themselves at liberty to go and take up their abode anywhere among
their friends, and remain without charge, as long as they please. And
the same custom entitles them to beg and borrow from each other to any
extent. Boats, tools, garments, money, etc., are all freely lent to
each other, if connected with the same tribe or clan. A man cannot
bear to be called stingy or disobliging. If he has what is asked, he
will either give it, or adopt the worse course of telling a lie about
it, by saying that he has it not, or that it is promised to some one
else. This communistic system is a sad hindrance to the industrious,
and eats like a canker-worm at the roots of individual or national
progress. No matter how hard a young man may be disposed to work, he
cannot keep his earnings: all soon passes out of his hands into the
common circulating currency of the clan to which all have a latent
right. The only thing which reconciles one to bear with it until it
gives place to the individual independence of more advanced
civilisation, is the fact that, with such a state of things, no "poor
laws" are needed. The sick, the aged, the blind, the lame, and even
the vagrant, has always a house and home, and food and raiment, as far
as he considers he needs it. A stranger may, at first sight, think a
Samoan one of the poorest of the poor, and yet he may live ten years
with that Samoan and not be able to make him understand what _poverty_
really is, in the European sense of the word. "How is it?" he will
always say. "_No food!_ Has he no friends? _No house to live in!_
Where _did_ he grow? Are there no houses belonging to his friends?
Have the people there no love for each other?"

CHAPTER XIV.

CANOES.

Next to a well-built house, Samoan ingenuity was seen in their canoes.
Any one could fell a tree, cut off the branches, and h