which there is some degree of privacy. These are much smaller, and so
constructed as to be carried about in their canoes from place to place,
and set up occasionally, like a tent; they are enclosed on the sides
with cocoa-nut leaves, but not so close as to exclude the air, and the
chief and his wife sleep in them alone.

There are houses also of a much larger size, not built either for the
accommodation of a single chief, or a single family; but as common
receptacles for all the people of a district. Some of them are two
hundred feet long, thirty broad, and, under the ridge, twenty feet high;
these are built and maintained at the common expence of the district,
for the accommodation of which they are intended; and have on one side
of them a large area, inclosed with low pallisadoes.

These houses, like those of separate families, have no walls. Privacy,
indeed, is little wanted among people who have not the idea of
indecency, and who gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses,
with no more sense of impropriety than we feel when we satisfy our
hunger at a social board with our family or friends. Those who have no
idea of indecency with respect to actions, can have none with respect to
words; it is, therefore, scarcely necessary to observe, that, in the
conversation of these people, that which is the principal source of
their pleasure, is always the principal topic; and that every thing is
mentioned without any restraint or emotion, and in the most direct
terms, by both sexes.[8]

[Footnote 8: Let us for once hear the missionary account, in palliation
at least, of such clamant enormities. "They have no partitions in their
houses; but it may be affirmed, they have in many instances more refined
ideas of decency than ourselves; and one long a resident, scruples not