polite Samoan--none of these can be compared with the Marquesan
paepae-hae, or dwelling platform. The paepae is an oblong terrace
built without cement or black volcanic stone, from twenty to fifty
feet in length, raised from four to eight feet from the earth, and
accessible by a broad stair. Along the back of this, and coming to
about half its width, runs the open front of the house, like a
covered gallery: the interior sometimes neat and almost elegant in
its bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming,
some bright raiment perhaps hanging from a nail, and a lamp and one
of White's sewing-machines the only marks of civilization. On the
outside, at one end of the terrace, burns the cooking-fire under a
shed; at the other there is perhaps a pen for pigs; the remainder
is the evening lounge and al fresco banquet-hall of the
inhabitants. To some houses water is brought down the mountains in
bamboo pipes, perforated for the sake of sweetness. With the
Highland comparison in my mind, I was struck to remember the
sluttish mounds of turf and stone in which I have sat and been
entertained in the Hebrides and the North Islands. Two things, I
suppose, explain the contrast. In Scotland wood is rare, and with
materials so rude as turf and stone the very hope of neatness is
excluded. And in Scotland it is cold. Shelter and a hearth are
needs so pressing that a man looks not beyond; he is out all day
after a bare bellyful, and at night when he saith, 'Aha, it is
warm!' he has not appetite for more. Or if for something else,
then something higher; a fine school of poetry and song arose in
these rough shelters, and an air like 'Lochaber no more' is an
evidence of refinement more convincing, as well as more
imperishable, than a palace.

To one such dwelling platform a considerable troop of relatives and