They Are Generally Built On A Platform Of Rocks, With Doors Upon Two Or More Sides, According To The Size Of The Hut; And A Sloping Sort Of Rough Plank With Notches On It Leads From The Ground To Each Door.

In the interior, the sides of the walls are often beautifully lined with the stems of reeds, fashioned very neatly, and in some cases in really artistic patterns, and tied together with thin ropes of coconut fibre, dyed various colours, and often ornamented with rows of large white cowry shells.

The floor of these huts is much like a springy mattress, being packed to a depth of several feet with palm and other leaves, and on the top are strips of native mats permanently fastened, whereas in Samoa the floor is made up of small pieces of brittle white coral, over which are loose mats, which can be moved at will. In Fijian huts there is always a sort of raised platform at one end of the hut, on which are piles of the best native mats, and, being the guest, I generally got this to myself. The roof inside is very finely thatched, the beams being of "Niu sau," a native palm,[5] the cross-pieces and main supports being enormous bits of hard wood. The smaller supports of the sides are generally the trunks of tree-ferns. The doors in most of the huts are a strip of native matting or fantastically-painted "tapa" cloth, fastened to two posts a few feet inside the hut. In some huts there are small openings in the walls which answer for windows. The hearth was generally near one of the doors in the centre of the hut, and fire was produced by rubbing a piece of hard wood on a larger piece of soft wood, and working it up and down in a groove till a spark was produced. I have myself successfully employed this method when out shooting green pigeon ("rupe") in the mountains.

With regard to food, I at first fared very well, although we had our meals at all hours, as Ratu Lala was very irregular in his habits. Our chief food was turtle. We had it so often that I soon loathed the taste of it. The turtles, when brought up from the sea were laid on their backs under a tree close by the house, and there the poor brutes were left for days together. Ratu Lala's men often brought in a live wild pig, which they captured with the aid of their dogs. At other times they would run them down and spear them; this was hard and exciting work, as I myself found on several occasions that I went pig hunting. One of the most remarkable things that I saw in Taviuni, from a sporting point of view, was the heart of a wild pig, which, when killed, was found to have lived with the broken point of a wooden spear fully four inches in length buried in the very centre of its heart.

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