nd they have been but slightly affected by
the outside influences which for some years past have been constantly
brought to bear upon the natives of the adjoining coast line and the
people of the Mekeo plains; so that comparisons of these people with
their more up-to-date neighbours as regards their relative natural
characters may well be in some respects misleading.

Subject, however, to this caution I would say that they are lazy
and easy-going (though not so much so as the Roro and Mekeo people),
lively, excitable, cheerful, merry, fairly intelligent (this being
judged rather from the young people), very superstitious, brave,
with much power of enduring pain, cruel, not more revengeful perhaps
than is usual among uncivilised natives, friendly one with another,
not quarrelsome, but untrustworthy and not over-faithful even in
their dealings with one another, though honest as regards boundaries
and property rights and in the sense of not stealing from one another
within their own communities (this being regarded as a most shameful
offence), and of very loose sexual morality.

A difference between them and the Mekeo and Roro natives is that
they appear to be not so conservative as the latter, being more
ready to abandon old traditions and adopt new ideas; though this
characteristic is one which shows itself in the young people rather
than in the elders with their formed habits.

CHAPTER III

Dress and Ornament

Dress.

The perineal band, made of bark cloth, is the one article of dress
which is universally worn by both men and women.

These bands are made by both men and women, but are coloured by men
only. They are commonly unstained and undecorated; but some of them,
and especially those worn for visiting and at dances, are more or
less decorated. Some that I have noticed are stained in one colour
covering the whole garment; others in two colours arranged in alternate
transverse bands, sometimes with narrow spaces of unstained cloth
between; and again others have bands of one colour alternating with
bands of unstained cloth. Some are decorated with lines or groups
of lines of one colour, or alternating lines or groups of lines of
two colours, painted transversely across the cloth. Others, while
simply stained in one colour or stained or decorated in one of the
ways above described, have another simple terminal design near the
end of the garment.

The men's bands are usually small and narrow, as