pping, for three, six, or nine
months it may be, until the house is finished. Their _adze_ reminds us
of ancient Egypt. It is formed by the head of a small hatchet, or any
other flat piece of iron, lashed on, at an angle of forty-five, to the
end of a small piece of wood, eighteen inches long, as its handle. Of
old they used stone and shell axes and adzes.

The man whose house is being built provides the carpenters with board
and lodging, and is also at hand with his neighbours to help in
bringing wood from the bush, scaffolding, and other heavy work. As we
have just remarked, a Samoan house-builder made no definite charge,
but left the price of his work to the judgment, generosity, and means
of the person who employed him. It was a lasting disgrace to any one
to have it said that he paid his carpenter shabbily. It branded him as
a person of no rank or respectability, and was disreputable, not
merely to himself, but to the whole family or _clan_ with which he was
connected. The entire tribe or clan was his _bank_. Being connected
with that particular tribe, either by birth or marriage, gave him a
latent interest in all their property, and entitled him to go freely
to any of his friends to ask for help in paying his house-builder. He
would get a mat from one, worth twenty shillings; from another he
might get one more valuable still; from another some native cloth,
worth five shillings; from another, some foreign property; and thus he
might collect, with but little trouble, two or three hundred useful
articles, worth, perhaps, forty or fifty pounds; and in this way the
carpenter was generally well paid. Now and then there might be a
stingy exception; but the carpenter, from certain indications,
generally saw ahead, and decamped, with all his party, leaving the
house unfinished. It was a standing custom, that after the sides and
one end of the house were finished, the principal part of the payment
was made; and it was at this time that a carpenter, if he was
dissatisfied, would get up and walk off. A house with two sides and
but one end, and the carpenters away, was indicative. Nor could the
chief to whom the house belonged employ another party to finish it. It
was a fixed rule of the trade, and rigidly adhered to, that no one
would take up the work which another party had thrown down. The chief,
therefore, had no alternative but to go and make up matters with the
original carpenter, in order to have his house decently com