Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/158

134 "We went into some of the native houses, and found them neat and clean. The roofs of the houses are very high, and supported on low posts; Fred said there was a great deal of roof and very little wall, and this exactly describes a Samoan house. The roof is thatched with palm-leaves, and when well and properly laid will exclude the heaviest rains. The houses have no doors, mats being suspended at the entrance; the result is, the dogs and chickens may walk in when they choose, though in many houses the chickens are not allowed to enter.

"It is the custom to place screens of plaited palm-leaves around the houses at night, but they are always removed at daylight. In the interior of the houses screens of cloth are suspended from the roof to divide the space into rooms where the inmates sleep. The couches are piles of fine mats of cocoa fibre, and the pillows are simply sticks of bamboo or other wood, on which the neck, not the head, is rested. It is about as uncomfortable as the Japanese pillow, which it closely resembles, and is no doubt the cause of the early-rising habits of the natives.

"All the cooking is done out-of-doors, and there is very little inside the houses that can be called furniture. In one house we found a group of young people playing a game which was something like our game of forfeits. They sat in a circle and spun a cocoanut around on its sharp end; when it fell the person towards whom the three black eyes pointed was adjudged the loser. When they are to decide which of them is to do anything, leaving the others free, the lottery of the cocoanut is used to determine the matter.

"Warfare being more prevalent here in later years than in the Society group, we found the games of the young men much more vigorous than at Tahiti, We saw a party of boys playing at totoga, or reed-throwing; they had reeds five or six feet long, with points of hard wood, and the skill of the game consisted in making the reeds skim as far as possible along the grass.