Page 428
An.1687
Buildings on the sides of Precipices.
be red hot : then they take them out and cool them in water, and rub off the paste ; and they look again of a glorious colour and lustre.
These people make but small low Houses. The sides, which are made of small posts, watled with boughs, are not above 4 foot and an half high : the ridge pole is about 7 or 8 foot high. They have a fire-place at one end of their Houses, and boards placed on the ground to lye on. They inhabit to- gether in small Villages, built on the sides and tops of rocky hills ; 3 or 4 rows of Houses one a- bove another, and on such steep præcipices, that they go up to the first row with a wooden Ladder, and so with a Ladder still from every story up to that above it, there being no way to ascend. The Plain on the first præcipice may be so wide, as to have room both for a row of Houses that stand all along on the edge or brink of it, and a very narrow street running along before their doors, between the row of Houses and the foot of the next præci- pice ; the plain of which is in a manner level to the tops of the Houses below, and so for the rest. The common Ladder to each row or street comes up at a narrow passage left purposely about the middle of it ; and the street being bounded with a præcipice also at each end, tis but drawing up the Ladder, if they be assaulted, and then there is no coming at them from below, but by climbing up as against a perpendicular wall: and that they may not be assaulted from above, they take care to build on the side of such a hill, whose backside hangs over the Sea, or is some high, steep, per- pendicular præcipice, altogether inaccessible. These præcipices are natural ; for the Rocks seem too hard to work on ; nor is there any sign that Art hath been employed about them. On Bashee Island there is one such, and built upon, with its back next the Sea. Grafton and Monmouth Isles are very thick