Nineteen years in Polynesia: missionary life, travels, and researches in the islands of the Pacific . , ornine months, it may be, until the house is finished. Their ache reminds oneof ancient Egypt. It isformed by the head of asmall hatchet, or anyother flat piece of iron,lashed on, at an angle offorty-five, to the end ofa small piece of wood,eighteen inches long, asits handle. Of old theyused stone and shell man whose house is being built provides thecarpenters with board and lodging, and is also athand with his neighbours to help in bringing woodfrom the bush, scaffolding, and othe
Nineteen years in Polynesia: missionary life, travels, and researches in the islands of the Pacific . , ornine months, it may be, until the house is finished. Their ache reminds oneof ancient Egypt. It isformed by the head of asmall hatchet, or anyother flat piece of iron,lashed on, at an angle offorty-five, to the end ofa small piece of wood,eighteen inches long, asits handle. Of old theyused stone and shell man whose house is being built provides thecarpenters with board and lodging, and is also athand with his neighbours to help in bringing woodfrom the bush, scaffolding, and other heavy we have just remarked, a Samoan house-buildermakes no definite charge, but leaves the price of hiswork to the judgment, generosity, and means ofthe person who employs him. It is a lasting dis-grace to any one to have it said that he paid hiscarpenter shabbily. It brands him as a person ofno rank or respectability, and is disreputable, notmerely to himself, but to the whole family or clanwith which he is connected. The entire tribe orclan is his bank. Being connected with that par-. HOUSES. 2C3 ticular tribe, either by birth or marriage, gives hima latent interest in all their property, and entitleshim to go freely to any of his friends to ask for helpin paying his house-builder. He will get a matfrom one, worth twenty shillings ; from another hemay get one more valuable still; from another, somenative cloth, worth five shillings; from another, fouror six yards of calico ; and thus he may collect,with but little trouble, two or three hundred usefularticles, worth, perhaps, forty or fifty pounds; andin this way the carpenter is generally well and then there will be a stingy exception ; butthe carpenter, from certain indications, generally seesahead, and decamps, with all his party, leaving thehouse unfinished. It is a standing custom, thatafter the sides and one end of the house are finished,the principal part of the payment be made ; and itis at this tim
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade186, booksubjectmissions, bookyear1861
