Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1875 — Sleeping in Trees. [ARTICLE]

Sleeping in Trees.

The little spot of land rising in tne South Seas called Ysabel Isle is divided among several savage tribes that are continually at aarwith each other. A terrible massacre occurring in a portion of the island named Mahaga, the sufferers adopted as a means of defense against future surprises of a similarly unpleasant nature the custom of sleeping in houses built in high trees, though living by day in the ordinary open bamboo huts, when the Rev. Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of the Melanesian Islands, visited Mahaga he was very curious to inspect these human nests in the summits of the loftiest palms. They were situated in a swamp that for greater safety was surrounded -by a strong wall. The lower boughs of the trees selected for habitation had been lopped off, leaving only the highest as a platform for the houses. A plumb-line let down from the veranda of one of these houses to the ground showed the distance to be ninetyfour feet. - The ladders leading up to the houses were planted upon the top of the wall. They consisted of a bamboo pole in the center to which cross-pieces about two feet iong were lashed by vines. To steady these and also to hold on by there were double sets of pliant vine stems stretched along the whole length. One ladder was found to measure siity feet. Another of fifty feet had forty-two rounds or cross-pieces at unequal distances apart. Up and down these -dizzy ladders the native men, women and children ran like monkeys, never using their hands, but trusting entirely to the sure planting of their feet. At first the Bishop dared not attempt an ascent, and while he stood wondering at the fearlessness of the •climbers he saw a woman go up with a heavy burden on her back as if it was the easiest thing in the world, and not once staying herself with her hands. A sailor in the company of the Bishop, who was perfectly at home in the shrouds of a ship, ascended one of the ladders, and when he came down confessed: “I was afraid my legs shook. Going aloft is nothing to it.” At another time the Bishop himself managed to reach one of the arboreal huts. He found it in an inexpressible filthy condition. The floor was made of malted bamboo, and measured twenty-three feet by eleven feet, and the roof and sides were of palm leaf thatch. The roof was low, and there were no apertures for air and light. Everything was grimy with soot and dirt, while the noise of squalling babies, the singing and scolding of women and the chatter of all the natives together made the place a very pandemonium. A brief stay in the wonderful nest convinced the Bishop that it was much more comfortable to sleep in a hut on the ground, where during the night the singing and squalling of the women and babies above him sounded as if they were in the clouds. : .■