The _whare_ was often rendered attractive on the outside by elaborate carving, and quaint by the grotesque figures surmounting the gables. It was within only a wide, low room, with roof of _raupo_-thatch[45] and eaves within three feet of the ground. A stone-lined hole served as a fireplace, the floor was strewn with fern upon which were thrown the sleeping-mats, and a sliding panel formed a door, which was blocked when privacy or warmth was desired. Furniture there was none; but this mattered little, since the house was rarely used save as a dormitory, or a shelter during cold or wet weather. Within the village a piece of ground was set apart for the _marae_, or public square, whither folk repaired for gossip or recreation when the work of the day was done. Without the enclosure were home fields of _kumara_ and _taro_, where the women laboured as many women labour in the potato and turnip-fields in Scotland. The heavy tasks as a rule fell to the men, and were undertaken cheerfully enough, though the Maori became less careful in this respect after years of intercourse with the Pakeha. To the men also belonged the duty of supplying the commissariat and, while some hunted or fished, others cleared the forest trails, upon which the undergrowth reproduced itself with extraordinary rapidity. The question of animal food was always a vital one in the days before the _poaka_, or pig, rioted through the bush, and there were many days on which the Maori were forced to content themselves with fern-root and _kanini_ berries for the two meals in which they daily indulged. Though they had neither books nor writings upon parchment, stone or papyrus, the Maori were not without a literature of their own. Great deeds of heroic ancestors, notable events of the past were immortalised in song and story, and handed down from generation to generation. On summer nights an eager audience thronged the _marae_, listening, rapt, to some "divine-voiced singer," or to some other, who told with every trick and charm of the finished orator the story of "the brave days of old," when Ngahue fought in far Hawaiki, or sailed the sea with Te Turi to find the land of Maui. Always decorous, the listeners applauded discreetly, and chewed incessantly the hardened juice of the sow-thistle, the precious gum of the _kauri_, or the _mimiha_, bitumen from the under-sea springs of the west. None of these was harmful like the opium of the Chinaman or the _kava_ of the Polynesian. The Maori chewed his gum much as the fair American chews hers, or as the youthful Scot surreptitiously sucks his peppermint during the Sunday sermon in the kirk.