narrow, nor the slopes so steep, as are those of the Kuni district, and
the villages themselves are not generally so narrow, as the contour of
the country does not involve these conditions to the same extent. Also
the Mafulu villages are on the lower ridges only, and not on the high
mountains; but the actual elevations above sea-level of these lower
ridges are, I think, generally higher than those of the top ridges of
the Kuni. Plate 54 shows the position and surroundings of the village
of Salube (community of Auga), and is a good representative example,
except that the plate does not show any open grassland.

The villages are, or were, protected with stockades and with pits
outside the stockades, and sometimes with platforms on trees near the
stockade boundaries, from which platforms the inhabitants can shoot
and hurl stones upon an enemy climbing up the slope. The stockade
is made of timber, is about 15 to 25 feet high, and is generally
constructed in three or more parallel rows or lines, each of the
lines having openings, but the openings never being opposite to one
another. These protections have now, however, been largely, though
not entirely, discontinued. [60] It is, or was, also the practice,
when expecting an attack, to put into the ground in the approaches
to the village calthrop-like arrow-headed objects, with their points
projecting upwards.

The average size of the villages is small compared with that of the
large villages of Mekeo, some of them having only six or eight houses,
though many villages have thirty houses, and some of them have fifty
or sixty or more. The houses and _emone_ are much smaller than those
of Mekeo, and much ruder and simpler in construction and they have
no carving or other decoration. There are no communal houses.