Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/294

236 with the bark of trees on the inside, and many have either over the door or somewhere in the house a plank covered with their carving, which they seem to value much as we do a picture, placing it always as conspicuously as possible. All these houses have the door at one end; and near it is a square hole which serves as a window or probably in winter time more as a chimney; for then they light a fire at the end where this door and window are placed. The side walls and roof project generally eighteen inches or two feet beyond the end wall, making a kind of porch, where are benches on which the people of the house often sit. Within is a square place fenced off with either boards or stones from the rest, in the middle of which they can make a fire; the sides of the house are thickly laid with straw, on which they sleep. As for furniture, they are not much troubled with it; one chest commonly contains all their riches, consisting of tools, cloths, arms, and a few feathers to stick into their hair; their gourds or baskets made of bark, which serve them to keep fresh water, their provision baskets, and the hammers with which they beat their fern roots, are generally left without the door.

Mean and low as these houses are, they most perfectly resist all inclemencies of the weather, and answer consequently the purposes of mere shelter as well as larger ones would do. The people, I believe, spend little of the day in them (except maybe in winter); the porch seems to be the place for work, and those who have not room there must sit upon a stone, or on the ground in the neighbourhood.

Some few families of the better sort have a kind of courtyard, the walls of which are made of poles and hay, ten or twelve feet high, and which, as their families are large, encloses three or four houses. But I must not forget the ruins, or rather frame of a house (for it had never been finished), which I saw at Tolaga, as it was so much superior in size to anything of the kind we have met with in any other part of the land. It was 30 feet in length, 15 in breadth, and 12 high; the sides of it were ornamented with many broad