be as free from them as any inhabitants of so warm a climate could be. Those to whom combs were given proved this, for those with whom I was best acquainted kept themselves very clean during our stay by the use of them. Eating lice is a custom which none but children, and those of the inferior people, can be charged with. Their clothes also, as well as their persons, are kept almost without spot or stain; the superior people spend much of their time in repairing, dyeing, etc., the cloth, which seems to be a genteel amusement for the ladies here as it is in Europe.
Their clothes are either of a kind of cloth made of the bark of a tree, or mats of several different sorts; of all these and of 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 most diverse, as they never form dresses, or sew any two pieces together. A piece of cloth, generally two yards wide and eleven long, is sufficient clothing for any one, and this is put on in a thousand different ways, often very genteelly. Their formal dress however is, among the women, a kind of petticoat, parou, wrapped round their hips, and reaching to about the middle of their legs; and one, two, or three pieces of thick cloth, about two and a half yards long and one wide, called tebuta, through a hole in the middle of which they put their heads, and suffer the sides to hang before and behind, the open edges serving to give their arms liberty of movement. Round the ends of this, about as high as their waists, are tied two or three large pieces of thin cloth, and sometimes one or two more thrown loosely over their shoulders, for the rich seem to take the greatest pride in wearing a large quantity of cloth. The dress of the men differs but little from this, their bodies are rather more bare, and instead of the petticoat they have a piece of cloth (maro) passed between their legs and round their waists, which gives them rather more liberty to use their limbs than the women’s dress will allow. Thus much of the richer people; the poorer sort have only a smaller allowance of cloth given them from the tribes or families to which they belong, and must use that to the best advantage.
