the same village. On a house being pulled down and not rebuilt, or
being abandoned and left to decay, the site reverts to the village,
and another person may build a house upon it. [65] Houses are never
sold, but the ordinary life of a house is only a few years.

The man's bush land is his own property, and his ownership includes
all trees and growth which may be upon it, and which no other man may
cut down, but it does not include game, this being the common property
of the community; and any member of the community is entitled to pass
over the land, hunt on it, and fish in streams passing through it,
as he pleases. The whole of the bush land of the community belongs
in separate portions to different owners, one man sometimes owning
two or more of such portions; and it is most remarkable that, though
there are apparently no artificial boundary marks between the various
portions, these boundaries are, somehow or other, known and respected,
and disputes with reference to them are practically unknown. How the
original allocations and allotments of land have been made does not
appear to be known to the people themselves.

The man's garden plot or plots are also his own, having been cleared
by him or some predecessor of his out of his or that predecessor's
own bush land; and he may build in his gardens as many houses as
he pleases. His ownership of his garden plot is more exclusive than
is that of his bush land, as other people are not entitled to pass
over it. But on the other hand, if he abandons the garden, and nature
again overruns it with growth--a process which takes place with great
rapidity--it ceases to be his garden, and reverts to, and becomes
absorbed in, the portion of the bush out of which it had been cleared;
and if, as it may be, he is not the sole owner of that portion of bush,
he loses his exclusive right to the land, which as a garden had been