h leaves of sugar-cane. The door-way is in the middle of one side,
formed like a porch, and so low and narrow, as just to admit a man to enter
upon all fours. The largest house I saw was about sixty feet long, eight or
nine feet high in the middle, and three or four at each end; its breadth,
at these parts, was nearly equal to its height. Some have a kind of vaulted
houses built with stone, and partly under ground; but I never was in one of
these.

I saw no household utensils among them, except gourds, and of these but
very few. They were extravagantly fond of cocoa-nut shells, more so than of
any thing we could give them. They dress their victuals in the same manner
as at Otaheite; that is, with hot stones in an oven or hole in the ground.
The straw or tops of sugar-cane, plantain heads, &c. serve them for fuel to
heat the stones. Plantains, which require but little dressing, they roast
under fires of straw, dried grass, &c. and whole races of them are ripened
or roasted in this manner. We frequently saw ten or a dozen, or more, such
fires in one place, and most commonly in the mornings and evenings.

Not more than three or four canoes were seen on the whole island, and these
very mean, and built of many pieces sewed together with small line. They
are about eighteen or twenty feet long, head and stem carved or raised a
little, are very narrow, and fitted with out-riggers. They do not seem
capable of carrying above four persons, and are by no means fit for any
distant navigation. As small and mean as these canoes were, it was a matter
of wonder to us, where they got the wood to build them with; for in one of
them was a board six or eight feet long, fourteen inches broad at one end,
and eight at the other; whereas we did not see a stick on the island that
would have made a board half this size, nor, indeed, was there another
piece in the whole canoe half so big.

There are two ways by which it is possible they may have got this large
wood; it might have been left here by the Spaniards, or it might have been
driven on the shore of the island from some distant land. It is even
possible that there may be some land in the neighbourhood, from whence they
might have got it. We, however, saw no signs of any, nor could we get the
least information on this head from the natives, although we tried every
method we could think of to obtain it. We were almost as unfortunate in our
enquiries for the proper or native name of the island