Their furniture and implements consist of but few articles, and one chest commonly contains them all, except their provision-baskets, the gourds that hold their fresh water, and the hammers that are used to beat their fern-root, which generally stand without the door: some rude tools, their clothes, arms, and a few feathers to stick in their hair, make the rest of their treasure.
Some of the better sort, whose families are large, have three or four houses enclosed within a court-yard, the walls of which are constructed of poles and hay, and are about ten or twelve feet high.
When we were on shore in the district called Tolaga, we saw the ruins, or rather the frame of a house, for it had never been finished, much superior in size to any that we saw elsewhere: it was thirty feet in length, about fifteen in breadth, and twelve high: the sides of it were adorned with many carved planks, of a workmanship much superior to any other that we had met with in the country; but for what purpose it was built, or why it was deserted, we could never learn.
But these people, though in their houses they are so well defended from the inclemency of the weather, seem to be quite indifferent whether they have any shelter at all during their excursions in search of fern-roots and fish, sometimes setting up a small shade to windward, and sometimes altogether neglecting even that precaution, sleeping with their women and children under bushes, with their weapons ranged round them, in the manner that has already been described. The party, consisting of forty or fifty, whom we saw at Mercury Bay, in a district which the natives call Opoorage, never erected the least shelter while we staid there, though it sometimes rained incessantly for four-and-twenty hours together.
The articles of their food have been enumerated already; the principal, which to them is what bread is to the inhabitants of Europe, is the roots of the fern which grows upon the hills, and is nearly the same with what grows upon our high commons in England, and is called indifferently fern, bracken, or brakes. The birds, which sometimes serve them for a feast, are chiefly penguins and albatrosses, with a few other species that have been occasionally mentioned in this narrative.