In building a large house about a hundred of these pillars are required. Those forming the doorway are frequently bound with _sinnet_ (which is a kind of coarse string), black, brown, or yellow, interwoven so as to form most elaborate patterns, extremely artistic in effect. Sometimes in churches, all the rafters are thus adorned, each being of a different design, telling of the patient care that has been lavished on their decoration. Sometimes, too, they are ornamented with pure white shells (the _Cyprea ovula_), strings of which are also wreathed round the projecting ends of the ridge-pole, and hang thence in long graceful festoons.[22] The walls, both of houses and churches, are generally formed of reeds, with a thick outer coating of dried leaves. You can fancy how readily such buildings burn on the smallest provocation; the only marvel is why fires are not far more numerous, considering the extreme carelessness with which the blazing bamboos, which act the part of candles, are carried about; to say nothing of the fireplaces, of which there are occasionally several in one house, and which are merely hollows sunk in the floor, with an edge of rough wood dividing them from the mats. One of these is generally in the centre of the house. Chimneys are unknown luxuries; so the smoke floats about at random, and settles in rich brown layers on the rafters, and on the household goods that rest thereon, which sometimes include an old war-club of curious form, which probably has made short work of many a foeman’s skull, or a long black spear, with three or four feet of most beautiful and intricate carving extending upward from the head. There is generally a sort of scaffolding of rude posts and shelves above the fire, which is used for cooking, and here, through the thick blue wood-smoke you perceive various cooking-pots and earthenware jars. Carved wooden bowls of various form and size hang round the walls: some with curiously carved handles, of which you never see two alike, are used to contain oil; others are used in the manufacture of the noxious national drink called _yangona_ (elsewhere throughout the Pacific known as _kava_). The large wooden bowls in which the yangona is prepared, and the small cocoa-nut shells in which it is served, both acquire a beautiful enamel, sometimes of a bluish colour, which is called the bloom, and gives great value to the bowl. A few wooden pillows—merely a stick or bamboo on two short legs—complete the scanty household inventory. There is no more furniture of any sort. All round the fires lie the family and their friends on their mats, beneath which is spread a thick layer of soft dry grass.