Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/245

] were all nearly of the shape of beehives, a toise and a half in height, and as much in breadth. (See Plate XXXVIII, Fig. 28, 29, 30).

Figure 28 represents one of these huts, surrounded by a palisade a yard and a half high, made with the limbs of the cocoa tree, arranged pretty close to each other, and three feet and half from the borders of the hut. A little walk was formed in the same manner before the door.

We afterwards saw several huts which were not surrounded by palisades (See Fig. 29). The door, which was about a yard high, and half a yard wide, was sometimes closed by means of a piece of a limb of the cocoa-tree, the folioles of which were interlaced. Several of these doors had two posts, made of planks, at the upper extremity of each of which a man's head was rudely carved. The lower part of these huts was erected perpendicularly to the height of a yard, where they tapered off in a pretty regular cone, terminated by the upper end of a post that was fixed in the centre of the floor.

Figure 30 represents the inside of these huts. The frame consists of poles, bearing against the upper end of the post, which may be seen rising from the middle of the floor, and which is near three inches in diameter at the bottom. A few pieces of wood bent to an arch, render these little