By most
gracious gestures, soft sounds and a series of fluttering finger
exercises on the abdominal walls we were led to one side of the circle
where, as our guides pointed upward, white eyes for the first time in
history rested on a Filbertine dwelling!
The houses were in the trees!
Architecture is said to express deeply the inner characteristics of
a people, a statement I am glad to corroborate. But never had it struck
me so forcibly as now. Gazing up at a dim picture of informal
construction, interlaced and blended with the trunks, boughs and foliage
of the overarching palms I saw at a glance the key-note of the life
of this simple people--_absence of labor_.
The houses,--nests, were the better word--were formed by a most naive
adaptation of natural surroundings to natural needs. The curving fronds
of the towering coco-palms and panjandrus had been interlaced; and
nature did the rest, the gigantic leaves interweaving, blending,
over-lapping, meeting in a passionate and successful desire to form
a roof, proof alike against sun and rain.
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