at intervals of four feet from each other all round, and you have a
good idea of the appearance of a Samoan house.

The spaces between these posts, which may be called open doors or
windows all round the house, are shut in at night by roughly-plaited
cocoa-nut leaf blinds. During the day the blinds are pulled up, and
all the interior exposed to a free current of air. The floor is raised
six 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