Most of the houses of primitive Hawaiians were small, but the grass houses of the chiefs were sometimes seventy feet long. They were all simply a framework of poles thatched with leaves or the long grass of the Islands. Inside, the few rude belongings--mats, calabashes, gourds, and baskets for fish--were all in strange contrast to the modern luxury which many of their descendants enjoy to-day. The cooking was done entirely by the men, in underground ovens. Stones were heated in these; the food, wrapped in ti leaves, was laid on the stones and covered with a layer of grass and dirt; then water was poured in through a small opening to steam the food. The mild climate of Hawaii makes very little clothing necessary for warmth, and before the advent of the missionaries the women wore only a short skirt of _tapa_ that reached just below the knees, and the men a loin-cloth, the _malo_. Tapa, a sort of papery cloth, is made from the bark of the paper mulberry. Hawaiians say that in the earliest days their forefathers had only coverings made of long leaves or braided strips of grass, until two of the great gods, Kane and Kanaloa, took pity upon them and taught them to make _kiheis_, or shoulder capes. Tapa making was an important part of the work of the women. It was sometimes brilliantly coloured with vegetable dyes and a pattern put on with a bamboo stamp. Unlike the patterns which our Indians wove into their baskets and blankets, each one of which had its meaning, these figures on the tapa had no special significance, so far as is known. By lapping strips of bark over each other and beating them together, the tapa could be made of any desired size or thickness. In the old legends, Hina, the mother of the demi-god Maui, figures as the chief tapa maker. The clouds are her tapas in the sky, on which she places stones to hold them down. When the winds drive the clouds before them, loud peals of thunder are the noise of the rolling stones. When Hina folds up her clouds the gleams of sunlight upon them are seen by men and called the lightning. The sound of the tapa beating was often heard in the Islands. The story is told, that the women scattered through the different valleys devised a code of signals in the strokes and rests of the mallets by which they sent all sorts of messages to one another--a sort of primitive telegraphy that must have been a great comfort and amusement to lonely women.