The common people generally sleep in the open air, in a sitting posture, and covered by their mats, all but the head; which has been described as giving them the appearance of so many hay-cocks or beehives.
The house of the chief is generally, as Rutherford found it to be in the present case, the largest in the village; but every village has, in addition to the dwelling-houses of which it consists, a public storehouse, or repository of the common stock of sweet potatoes, which is a still larger structure than the habitation of the chief. One which Cruise describes was erected upon several posts driven into the ground, which were floored over with deals at the height of about four feet, as a foundation. Both the sides and the roof were compactly formed of stakes intertwisted with grass; and a sliding doorway, scarcely large enough to admit a man, formed the entrance. The roof projected over this, and was ornamented with pieces of plank painted red, and having a variety of grotesque figures carved on them. The whole building was about twenty feet long, eight feet wide, and five feet high.
The residences of the chiefs are built upon the ground, and have generally the floor, and a small space in front, neatly paved; but they are so low that a man can stand upright in very few of them. The huts, as well as the storehouses, are adorned with carving over the door.
One of the arts in which the New Zealanders most excel is that of carving in wood. Some of their performances in this way are, no doubt, grotesque enough; but they often display both a taste and ingenuity which, especially when we consider their miserably imperfect tools, it is impossible to behold without admiration. This is one of the arts which, even in civilized countries, does not seem to flourish best in a highly advanced state of society. Even among ourselves, it certainly is not at present cultivated with so much success as it was a century or two ago.
Machinery, the monopolizing power of our age, is not well fitted to the production of striking effects in this particular branch of the arts. Fine carving is displayed, as in the works of Gibbons, by a rich and natural variety, altogether opposed to that faultless and inflexible regularity of operation which is the perfection of a machine. Hence the lathe, with all the miraculous capabilities it has been made to evolve, can never here come into successful competition with the chisel, in so far as the quality and spirit of the performance are concerned; but the former may, nevertheless, drive the latter out of the market, and seems in a great measure to have done so, by the infinitely superior facility and rapidity of its operation. Hence the gradual decay, and almost extinction among us, of this old art, of which former ages have left us so many beautiful specimens. It is said to survive now, if at all, not among our artists by profession, whose taste is expended upon higher objects, but among the common workmen of our villages, who have pursued it as an amusement, long after it has ceased to be profitable.
The New Zealand artist has no lathe to compete with; but neither has he even those ordinary hand-tools which every civilized country has always afforded. The only instruments he has to cut with are rudely fashioned of stone or bone. Yet even with these, his skill and patient perseverance contrive to grave the wood into any forms which his fancy may suggest. Many of the carvings thus produced are distinguished by both a grace and richness of design that would do no discredit even to European art.
The considerations by which the New Zealanders are directed in choosing the sites of their villages are the same which usually regulate that matter among other savages. The North American Indians, for example, generally build their huts on the sides of some moderately sized hill, that they may have the advantage of the ground in case of being attacked by their enemies, or on the bank of a river, which may, in such an emergency, serve them for a natural moat. A situation in which they are protected by the water on more sides than one is preferred; and, accordingly, both on this account, and for the sake of being near the sea, which supplies them with fish, the New Zealanders and other savage tribes are much accustomed to establish themselves at the mouths of rivers. Among the American Indians, as in New Zealand, a piece of ground is always left unoccupied in the middle of the village, or contiguous to it, for the holding of public assemblies. So, also, it used to be in our own country, almost every village in which had anciently its common and its central open space; the latter of which, after the introduction of Christianity, was generally decorated by the erection of a cross.
