We had considerable difficulty in procuring a suitable place to stop. There was a hotel and some boarding houses; but we could not live at any of them very long, for our funds were low. We secured a native house of one room, at a rent of four dollars per week. These native houses are built by putting posts in the ground, on which a board is laid as a plate for the rafters to rest upon. When the frame of posts and rafters is built, poles, about the size of hoop-poles, are lashed horizontally, about six inches apart, on to the posts and rafters. The house is then thatched by fastening a durable grass, which they have in that country, on to the poles. When finished, a house looks, in shape and size, like a well built hay stack. Such houses are only suited to a warm country where they never have frost. Inside the house they have no board floors. The ground is covered with grass, on which mats are laid. The making of these mats constitutes one of the chief employments of the women, and a good housewife in that country is known by the quantity and fineness of the mats in her home. Such a woman is very particular to have no dirt brought into her house; for the mats answer the purpose of beds, tables and chairs. They sit upon them; when they eat, their food, is placed upon them, and they form their bed, though in many houses they have the place of sleeping raised above the ordinary floor; but even then, they have mats spread out, upon which to sleep. In consideration of our being white men, the man of whom we rented the house procured a table and three chairs for us. We employed him to cook our food, which consisted principally of sweet potatoes and fish, or meat, with occasionally a little bread, bought at a bakery in town. In those days no native thought of using bread as an article of diet. Their food I shall describe more fully to you in a future chapter. We had an interview with the American consul, Mr. Bunker, and solicited through him an introduction to the governor of the Island. He readily complied with our request, and in our intercourse with Mr. Bunker he treated us very kindly. Our mission we felt to be of such importance that we wished to introduce it to the highest authority we could find. I made it a rule on those islands never to go into a place without waiting upon the leading and prominent men, stating my business, testifying to the work which God had commenced and asking their aid to enable me to lay the proclamation of which I was the bearer before the people. In this way I had interviews with princes, nobles, governors, officers of the government, missionaries and the leading men in every locality where I visited.