South Sea Islands
Index
Search
Contact us
several different sorts. Of all these and their manner of making them I shall speak in another place, here I shall only mention their method of covering and adorning their Persons, which is of course most various as they never form dresses, or sew any two things together. It must be a peice of cloth which is generaly 2 yards wide and 11 long, is sufficient Clothing for any one, and this they put on in a thousand different ways, often very genteel. Their dress of form however is, in the women, a kind of Peticoat (Parou) wrappd round their hipps, and reaching about the middle of their leggs; 1, 2 or 3 peices of thick cloth about 2_ yards long and one wide (Te buta) through a hole in the middle of which they put their heads, and suffer the sides of it to hang before and behind them, the open edges serving to give their arms liberty of moving; round the ends of this, about as high as their wastes, are tied 2 or 3 large peices of thin Cloth, and sometimes another or two thrown over their shoulders loosely, for the rich seem to shew their greatest pride in wearing a large quantity of cloth. The dress of the men differs but little from this; their bodys are rather more bare, and instead of the petticoat they have a peice of Cloth passed between their leggs and round their waists (Maro) which keeps up the strictest rules of decency, and at the same time gives them rather more liberty to use their
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 340, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-095.html