'54
i 770. hole, which ferves the double office of window and chimmarch.
r . , ■
'----.----- ney, for the fire-place is at that end, nearly in the middle
between the two fides: in fome confpicuous part, and generally
near the door, a plank is fixed, covered with carving
after their manner: this they value as we do a pidture, and
in their eftimation it is not an inferior ornament: the fide-
walls and roof projedt about two feet beyond the walls at
each end, fo as to form a kind of porch, in which there are
benches for the accommodation of the family. That part
of the floor which is allotted for the fire-place, is enclofed in
a hollow fquare, by partitions either o f Wood or ftone, and
in the middle of it the fire is kindled. The floor, along the
infide of the walls, is thickly covered with ftraw, and upon
, this the family fleep.
Furniture. Their furniture and implements confift of but few articles
and one cheft commonly contains them all, except their
provifion-bafkets, the gourds that hold their freffi water
and the hammers that are ufed to-beat their fern-root, which
generally Hand Without the door: fome rude tools, their
cloaths, arms, and a few feathers to flick in their hair
make the reft of their treafure.
Some of the better fort, whofe families are large, have
three or four houfes enclofed within a court-yard, the walls
of which are conftrudted of poles and Itay, and. are about
ten or twelve feet high.
•When we were on fliore in the diftricft called Tolaga, we
faw the ruins, or rather the frame of a houfe, for it had
never been finifhed, much fuperior in fize to any that we
faw elfewhere : it was thirty feet in length,- about fifteen in
breadth, and twelve high: the fides of it were adorned with
many carved planks, of a workmanlhip much fuperior to
any other that we had met with in the country; but for
what
what purpofe it was built, or why it was deferted, we could j &fe
never learn. '-----—
But thefe people, though in their houfes they are fo well
defended from the inclemency of the weather, feem to be
quite indifferent whether they have any flicker at all during
their excurfions in fearch of fern roots and fifh, fometimes
fetting up a fmall fliade to windward, and fometimes altogether
neglecting even that precaution, fleeping with their
women and children under bufhes, with their weapons-
ranged round them, in the manner that has already been
deferibed. The party confifting of forty or fifty, whom we
faw at Mercury Bay, in a diftridl which the natives call;
Opoorage, never credited the leaft ihelter while we flaid there,
though it fometimes rained inceflantly for four and twenty
hours together.
The articles of their food have been enumerated already; Foo*
the principal, which to them is what bread is to the inhabitants
of Europe, is the roots of the fern which grows upon,
the hills, and is nearly the fame with what grows upon our
high commons in England, and is called indifferently fern,
bracken, or brakes. The birds which fometimes ferve
them for a feaft, are chiefly penguins and albatroffes, with a-
few other fpecies that have been occafionally mentioned in-
this narrative-
Having no veffel in which water can be boiled, their cookdy.
cookery confifts wholly of baking and roafting, They bake
nearly in the fame manner as the inhabitants of the South.
Seas, and to the account that has been already given of their
roafting, nothing need be added, but that the long fleewer
or fpit to which the fiefli is fattened, is placed Hoping towards
the fire, by fetting one ftone againft the bottom of it, and
Reporting it near the middle with another, by the moving
of