d with a diversity of scents, and still within hearing of the surf
upon the reef, the native houses stand in scattered neighbourhood. The
same word, as we have seen, represents in many tongues of Polynesia,
with scarce a shade of difference, the abode of man. But although the
word be the same, the structure itself continually varies; and the
Marquesan, among the most backward and barbarous of islanders, is yet
the most commodiously lodged. The grass huts of Hawaii, the birdcage
houses of Tahiti, or the open shed, with the crazy Venetian blinds, of
the 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 of 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 civilisation. 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 mountain 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
dependants resort. In the hour of the dusk, when the fire blazes,