ried women wear a pendant of fringe behind and
five or six iron bars six inches long, the whole three and a half
inches broad, in front. Married women wear a fringe in front and
a leather apron behind.[1479]

+464. Men dressed. Women not.+ Cases are very numerous in which
men wear dress, while women do not.[1480] Such is the prevailing
fact amongst the Indians of the Upper Amazon[1481] and in Central
Africa.[1482] The women of the Apaporis (0 deg. N., 70 deg. W.) are said
to wear nothing, but the men wear long aprons of fine bark
string, broad bast girdles, and ornamental strings of teeth and
seeds; also ornaments in the nose and lips, and some tribes below
the lower lip.[1483] When women wear clothing and men do not the
men think it womanish and beneath them to do so.[1484] When
Livingston remonstrated with a negro for nakedness the latter
"laughed with surprise at the thought of being at all indecent.
He evidently considered himself above such weak superstition."
All thought it a joke when told to wear something when
Livingston's family should come.[1485]

+465. Dress for other purposes than decency. Excessive modesty.+
The Dyaks wear only a loin cloth of a greater or less number of
folds to keep the abdomen warm, "a precaution which all travelers
in the tropics must imitate day and night with flannel for fear
of dysentery."[1486] "The women [of the western side of Torres
Straits] frequently wear a kind of full chemise. They do not wear
it for the sake of decency, but from luxury and pride, for I
often saw a woman take off her garment and content herself with a
tuft of grass before and behind."[1487] Some Papuan women are
mentioned, who wear a petticoat on festival occasions, but they
leave the right side of it open to show the tattooing on the
hip.[1488] Since cotton cloth has become cheap in the Horn of
Africa the natives wear a great deal of it out of luxury and
ostentation, and also because it is a capital at all times easily
realizable.[1489] The Rodias, an outcast people on Ceylon, were
once compelled by the Kandyan kings to leave the upper part of
the body uncovered; both sexes. The English have tried to reverse
the rule, which has become a fixed habit. The Rodia women now
wear a neckerchief, the ends of which cover the breast, when
they meet English people, but they have not yet acquired the
fee