These rolls of mats and bedding, a bundle or two done up in native cloth on the same shelf in the centre of the house, a basket, a fan or two, and a bamboo knife stuck into the thatch within reach, a fishing-net, a club, and some spears strung up along the rafters, a few paddles, and a few cocoa-nut shell water-bottles, were about all the things in the shape of furniture or property to be seen in looking into a Samoan house.  The fire-place was about the middle of the house.  It was merely a circular hollow, two or three feet in diameter, a few inches deep, and lined with hardened clay.  It was not used for cooking, but for the purpose of lighting up the house at night.  A flaming fire, as we have already remarked (p. 75), was the regular evening offering to the gods, as the family bowed the head, and the fathers prayed for prosperity from the “gods great and small.”  The women collected during the day a supply of dried cocoa-nut leaves, etc., which, with a little management, kept up a continued blaze in the evening, while the assembled family group had their supper and prayer, and sat together chatting for an hour or two afterwards.

But about house-building:  it was a distinct trade in Samoa; and perhaps, on an average, you might find one among every three hundred men who was a master carpenter.  Whenever this person went to work he had in his train some ten or twelve, who followed him, some as journeymen, who expected payment from him, and others as apprentices, who were principally anxious to learn the trade.  When a young man took a fancy to the trade he had only to go and attach himself to the staff of some master carpenter, follow him from place to place for a few years, until he thought he could take the lead in building a house himself; and whenever he could point to a house which he had built, that set him up as a professed carpenter, and he would from that time be employed by others.

If a person wished a house built, he went with a fine mat, worth in modern cash value 20s. or 30s.  He told the carpenter what he wanted, and presented him with the mat as a pledge that he should be well paid for his work.  If he accepted the mat, that was a pledge that he undertook the job.  Nothing was stipulated as to the cost; that was left entirely to the honour of the employing party.  At an appointed time the carpenter came with his staff of helpers and learners.  Even now their only tools are a felling-axe, a hatchet, and a small adze; and there they sit, chop, chop, chopping, for three, six, or nine months it may be, until the house is finished.  Their adze reminds us of ancient Egypt.  It is formed by the head of a small hatchet, or any other flat piece of iron, lashed on, at an angle of forty-five, to the end of a small piece of wood, eighteen inches long, as its handle.  Of old they used stone and shell axes and adzes.