| caption: |
chapter two - the village |
| note: |
footnotes indicated by boxes within square brackets |
| text: |
The ordinary private house (heki) varies only slightly in size and hardly at all in pattern. A typical specimen is 35 feet long, 12 feet wide at the front wall, and 12 feet high at the front gable. The thatched roofs are steeply pitched and come almost to the ground at the sides, and the roof-tree slopes downwards from front to back. The framework is always of timber, the walls are of split and interlaced bamboo, and where it is available thatching-grass (ngai) is used for roofing. Hangrum (18) has none and thatches with fan-shaped palm-leaves. |
