It is only by size that the houses of the chiefs are distinguished from those of the lower orders, for the same barn-like shape is universal. They are, however, kept very clean; and their household utensils, consisting of wooden dishes and calabashes, are hung, neatly arranged, upon the walls. While the floors of the meaner houses are bare, except the place for sleeping, where a few mats are spread, those of the higher orders are entirely covered over with mats, many of which are worked with great elegance into different patterns. At one end, a platform raised about three feet from the ground, which extends the whole breadth of the apartment, is spread with a layer of rushes, and covered with mats. This forms the sleeping place for the upper part of the family; the attendants sleep at the opposite end.
As the two sexes never eat together, the chiefs have always a separate eating-house, and even the lower ranks have one to every six or seven families for the men. The women take their food in the same houses in which they sleep.
Few of the houses, except the largest, have any windows; the light being admitted by the door, which is seldom closed. The dwellings of the upper ranks are generally surrounded by a paling. In all of them the utmost attention to cleanliness prevails.
Their mode of cooking has been often described. Poey, or taro-pudding, which is the principal food of all ranks, is prepared by baking the root in a pit with hot stones, upon which water is poured. It is afterwards scraped, mashed, and mixed with cold water. When newly made, it is not unpalatable, but it soon turns sour.
Fish are often eaten raw, seasoned with salt water. When cooked, they are either done in their usual manner, under ground, or broiled, by putting them, wrapt in leaves, upon the fire. When the leaves are burnt, they consider them ready.
They preserve pork by taking out the bones, and rubbing it well with salt; after which it is made up in rolls, and dried.
They frequently eat with their pork a kind of pudding made of taro-root, which is previously cut in slices, and dried in the sun; it keeps a great length of time, and is a good substitute for bread. In this state it is preferred by the white people. The natives preserve it for taking to sea, by mashing and forming it into a solid paste, when it is wrapped in leaves, and will keep fresh for five or six weeks.
The sugar-cane, which they chew, is also a general article of food.
Instead of candles, the tootooee-nut is used, which being of an oily nature, yields a considerable quantity of light. It grows upon a small tree, and is about the size of a horse-chesnut. When pulled, they are thrown into water, and those that sink are reckoned sound; they are then baked under ground, and their shells broken off, in which state they are kept till required. When used as candles, they string twenty or thirty upon a slit of bamboo, each of which will burn five or six minutes; but they require constant trimming, and it is necessary to reverse the torch whenever a nut is consumed, that the one under it may catch fire. It must, therefore, be held by a person whose business it is to keep it always in order.
This nut, when pressed, yields an oil well adapted for mixing with paint. The black colour, by which their canoes are painted, is produced by burning the nuts after they are pressed, and by the cinders of the torches, which are carefully preserved for the purpose; these are reduced to powder, and mixed with oil.