STRANGE HOUSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

STRANGE HOUSES

Far back x in the olden days which we term prehistoric, there were cavedwellers who were probably among the first possessors of homes. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. When that early inhabitant of the earth, who is known to us as primitive man, first looked round for a roof to shelter him and his family, he found it ready to hand. Natural caves abounded everywhere, and when these were occupied by wild beasts he drove them out and took possession. In those bygone days in the period that we call the First Stone Age, man was little above the level of the beast. It was in later periods that he acquired enough intelligence to build rough structures of wood and grass.

For the strangest and crudest of homes we must go to the most savage, primitive folk on the earth’s surface. With the Australian aboriginals, for instance, who are very backward in intelligence their simply-made homes are often nothing more than “breakwinds,” composed of bark or leaves and roofed over by N boughs, and with one side completely open. These native huts, called “humpies,” “wurleys” or “gunyahs,” vary in different localities. Some are very roughly made; others are more substantial, with the tops and sides carefully thatched and plastered with clay and mud; while others yet are of the log-cabin type. Houses of grass \fsed to be a common sight in the beautiful Hawaiian Islands, in the Pacific, but these are fast disappearing. In some out-of-the-way places they may be seen yet, the huts built on a wooden frame and strongly thatched with grass. Poorlooking as such dwellings are, they are warm and comfortable, and are free from smoke, as the fireplace is outside.

Much more elaborate are the grasshouses of Fiji. These are imposing structures many feet high and planned more on the lines of a modern building. They have thickly-matted grass walls, with a platform at the base, and their roofs slant upward to a roof pole, the whole being finished off very carefully and smoothly. Inside the living-rooms there are more comforts in the way of chairs, tables, and couches than are generally to be found in grass-covered dwellings. The beehive-shaped house is popular in several quarters of the world. There are the curious, rounded huts of the Indians of the Montana of Peru. These structures, strongly built, are heavily thatched all over with grass and reeds, so that they look like gigantic, grass beehives. Of beehive-shape also are the well-known huts of Hottentots of South Africa, which are built of bent sticks with an outer covering of rush mats. The formation of a collection of these huts —a “kraal” as it is called—is circular, the inner portion of the ground being allotted to the livestock of the tribe. Many other African peoples build huts of this kind. The building of a house on the island of Samoa may serve as being typical of similar ones throughout the Pacific. Stout poles having been obtained, these are ranged round so as to lean inward toward a central point, like the ribs of a half-opened umbrella. Round these a number of laths or strips of wood are bent and tied firmly to the poles with ropes of coconut fibre. The final operation is the covering of this conical-shaped building with sugar-canes or leaves from the pandanus palm. Sometimes there will be a curtain made of plaited palm leaves, but the object of this is to screen the occupants from inclement weather rather than to shut them out from the public gaze, for the occupants of Samoan native houses do not bother much about privacy. Of all strange homes, however, there are none more strange, perhaps, than the snow-houses which the Eskimos of the Arctic wastes build for their use. These simple abodes are known as “igloos,’ 'and if they seem to us to be queer attempts at home-building, let us remember that they are well suited to the needs of the people who are forced to live in them, for they are, strangely enough, cold-proof. “Snowhouse” is the name generally used for the Eskimo huts, but those actually made of snow are only built occasionally for winter use. Eskimo igloos are mostly formed of earth, over a framework of whale’s bones or rock, or of moss and skins over a framework of willows.

These igloos of the Far North are winter houses; in the summer months the Eskimos take to bell-shaped, skin tents which resemble the tepees of the Indians, except that each tent possesses a single pole in place of several.