*769- hair, fo that thefe artificial honours of their head may hang
down behind. Their perfonal ornaments, befides flowers,
are few ; both fexes wear ear-rjngs, but they are placed only
on one fide: when we came they confifted of fmall pieces
of fhell, ftone, berries, red peas, or fome fmall pearls, three
in a firing ; but our beads very foon fupplanted them all.
The children go quite naked; the girls till they are three
or four years old, and the boys till they are fix or feven.
Hoof«. The houfes, or rather dwellings of thefe people have been
occafionally mentioned before: they are all built in the
wood, between the fea and the mountains, and no more
ground is cleared for each houfe, than juft fufficient to prevent
the dropping of the branches from rotting the thatch
with which they are covered; from the houfe, therefore, the
inhabitant fteps immediately under the Ihade, which is the
moft delightful that can be imagined. It confifts of groves
of bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts, without underwood, which
are interfered, in all directions, by the paths that lead from
one houfe to the other. Nothing can be more grateful than
this fhade in fo warm a climate, nor any thing more beautiful
than thefe walks. As there is no underwood, the fhade
cools without impeding the a ir ; and the houfes, having no
walls, receive the gale from whatever point it blows. I fhall
now give a particular defcription of a houfe of a middling
fize, from which, as the flructure is univerfally the fame, a
perfect idea may be formed both of thofe that are bigger,
and thofe that are lefs.
The ground which it covers is an oblong fquare, four and
twenty feet long, and eleven wide; over this a roof is raifed,
upon three rows of pillars or polls, parallel to each other,
one on each fide, and the other in the middle. This roof
confifts of two flat fides inclining to each other, and terminating
-nating in a ridge, exadlly like the roofs of our thatched Il69-
houfes in England.' The utmoft height within is about nine
feet, and the eaves on each fide reach to within about three
feet and an half of the- ground: below this, and through the
whole height at each end, it is open, no part o f it being in-
clofed with a wall. The roof is thatched with palm-leaves,
and the floor is covered, fome inches deep, with foft hay j
over this are laid mats, fo that the whole is one cufhion,
upon which they fit in the day, and fleep in the night. In
fome houfes, however, there is one ftool, which is wholly
appropriated to the mailer of the family ; befides this, they
have no furniture, except a few little blocks of wood, the
upper fide of which is hollowed into a curve, and which
ferve them for pillows.
The houfe is indeed principally ufed. as a dormitory ; for,
except it rains, they eat in the open air, under the fhade of
the next tree. The clothes that they wear in the day, ferve
them for covering in the night ; the floor is the common bed
o f the whole houfehold, and is not divided by any partition.
The mailer of the houfe and his wife fleep in the
middle, next to them the married people, next to them the
unmarried women, and next to them, at a little diftance, the
unmarried men; the fervants, or Toutous, as they are called,
fleep in the open air, except it rains, and in that cafe they
come juft within the fhed.
There are, however, houfes o f another kind, belonging to
the Chiefs, in which there is fome degree of privacy. Thefe
are much fmaller, and fo conftrudted as to be carried about
in their canoes from place to place, and fet up occafionally,
like a tent; they are inclofed on the fides with cocoa-nut
leaves, but not fo clofe as to exclude the air, and the Chief
and his wife fleep in them alone.
V o l . II. C c There