Formerly the maro and the slight covering of the tapa alone shielded them from the sun and rain.

Their bodies became hardy by exposure.

Their employments--fishing, taro-planting, tapa-making, bird-catching, canoe-making--were all laborious, and pursued out-of-doors.
Their grass houses, with openings for doors and windows, were, at any rate, tolerably well ventilated.

Take the man accustomed thus to live, and put shoes on his feet, a hat on his head, a shirt on his back, and trowsers about his legs, and lodge him in a house with close-shutting doors and windows, and you expose his constitution to a very serious strain, especially in a country where there is a good deal of rain.

Being, after all, but half civilized, he will probably sleep in a wet shirt, or cumber his feet with wet shoes; he will most likely neglect to open his windows at night, and poison himself and his family with bad air, to the influence of which, besides, his unaccustomed lungs will be peculiarly liable; he will live a less active life under his changed conditions; and altogether the poor fellow must have an uncommonly fine constitution to resist it all and escape with his life.