the floor is covered with soft hay, over which are laid mats, so that
the whole is one cushion, on which they sit by day and sleep by night.
They eat in the open air, under the shade of the nearest tree. In each
district there is a house erected for general use, much larger than
common, some of them exceeding two hundred feet in length, thirty broad,
and twenty high. The dwelling-houses all stand in the woody belt which
surrounds the island, between the feet of the central mountains and the
sea, each having a very small piece of ground cleared, just enough to
keep the dropping of the trees from the thatch. An Otaheitan wood
consists chiefly of groves of bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts, without
underwood, and intersected in all directions by the paths that lead from
one house to another. 'Nothing,' says Cook, 'can be more grateful than
this shade, in so warm a climate, nor anything more beautiful than these
walks,'

With all the activity they are capable of displaying, and the
sprightliness of their disposition, they are fond of indulging in ease
and indolence. The trees that produce their food are mostly of
spontaneous growth--the bread-fruit, cocoa-nut, bananas of thirteen
sorts, besides plantains; a fruit not unlike an apple, which, when ripe,
is very pleasant; sweet potatoes, yams, and a species of _arum_; the
pandanus, the jambu and the sugar-cane; a variety of plants whose roots
are esculent--these, with many others, are produced with so little
culture, that, as Cook observes, they seem to be exempted from the first
general curse that 'man should eat his bread in the sweat of his brow.'
Then for clothing they have the bark of three different trees, the paper
mulberry, the bread-fruit tree, and a tree which resembles the wild
fig-tree of the West Indies; of these the mulberry only requires to be
cultivated.