usual custom, the men wore their hair long or tied up in
a bunch, while the women wore it cropped short round their ears. The
bodies of both sexes were tattooed, but not their faces. They
manufactured three sorts of cloth for dress. The finest and whitest was
made from the paper-mulberry tree, and was used for the dresses of the
chief people. The second, used by the common people, was made from the
bread-fruit tree, and the third from a tree resembling a fig-tree. The
latter was coarse and harsh, and of the colour of the darkest brown
paper; but it was valuable because it resisted the wet, while the others
did not. The women of the upper class wore three pieces of cloth; one,
eleven yards long and two wide, was wrapped round the waist, and hung
down like a petticoat; while the two others were formed like the South
American poncho, the head being put through a hole in the middle, so as
to leave the arms at liberty. The men dressed in much the same way,
except that instead of allowing the cloth to hang down like a petticoat,
they brought it between their legs so as to have some resemblance to
breeches. The higher a person's rank, the more clothes he wore, some
throwing a large piece loosely over the shoulders. They shaded their
eyes from the sun with hats made at the moment required, of cocoanut
leaves or matting, and the women sometimes wore small turbans, or a
head-dress which consisted of long plaited threads of human hair, wound
round and round, with flowers of various kinds stuck between the folds,
especially the Cape jessamine, which was always planted near their
houses. The chiefs sometimes wore the tail feathers of birds stuck
upright in their hair. Their personal ornaments besides flowers were
few; but both sexes wore ear-rings of shells, stones, berries, or small
pearls.

Their houses were always built in woods, sufficient space only being
cleared to prevent the droppings from the boughs from rotting the roofs.
They were simply formed of three rows of parallel stakes for the
support of the roof, the highest part of which was only nine feet from
the ground, while the eaves reached to within three feet and a half.
The houses were thatched with palm-leaves, and the floor was covered
some inches deep with soft hay. They were, indeed, scarcely used for
any other purpose than as dormitories, the people living almost
constantly in the open air. The great chiefs, however, had houses in
which privacy could b