slabs of hardwood (TAPANG or Koompassia), and is specially reserved
for the reception of guests and for formal meetings. The platform
is interrupted here and there by smaller platforms raised some 3 or
4 feet from the floor, which are the sleeping quarters assigned to
the bachelors and male visitors. At intervals of some 30 or 40 feet
throughout the gallery are fireplaces similar to those in the private
chambers; on some of these fire constantly smoulders.

Over one of these fireplaces, generally one near the middle of
the great gallery, is hung a row of human heads (Pl. 38), trophies
obtained in war, together with a number of charms and objects used
in various rites.[37]

Alongside the inner wall of the gallery stand the large wooden mortars
used by the women in husking the PADI. Above these hang the winnowing
trays and mats, and on this wall hang also various implements of
common use -- hats, paddles, fish-traps, and so forth.

The gallery is reached from the ground by several ladders, each
of which consists of a notched beam sloping at an angle of about
45[degree], and furnished with a slender hand-rail. The more carefully
made ladder is fashioned from a single log, but the wood is so cut as
to leave a hand-rail projecting forwards a few inches on either side
of the notched gully or trough in which the feet are placed. From
the foot of each ladder a row of logs, notched and roughly squared,
and laid end to end, forms a foot-way to the water's edge. In wet
weather such a foot-way is a necessity, because pigs, fowls, and dogs,
and in some cases goats, run freely beneath and around the house, and
churn the surface of the ground into a thick layer of slippery mire.