STRAW PLAT. 169 



shoes, have art opportunity at the same time of 

 washing their feet*." In very wet weather they 

 use wooden clogs, which are attached to their straw- 

 platted shoes by ties also made of straw plat. 

 People of very high rank sometimes wear slippers 

 made of fine slips of rattan neatly platted. 



The natives of Tonquin wear also broad-brimmed 

 hats of platted straw or reeds, occasionally platting 

 strips of the palmeto leaf for the same purpose. But 

 not to enumerate many other comparatively civilized 

 people, we find the wild Indians of both the Americas, 

 the natives of the South Sea Islands, the Negros and 

 Hottentots of Africa, and even the poor savages near 

 the Polar regions, all- acquainted with the art of plat- 

 ting strips of wood, grasses, or sea-weeds, and some 

 of them producing, merely by hand, textures which 

 we, assisted by all the agency of machinery, could 

 scarcely rival. 



A very pretty and endurable kind of straw plat, 

 made in South America, is familiar to amateurs of 

 cigars. " A fabric highly esteemed in all the Spanish 

 possessions," says a recent traveller, "is that of a 

 species of grass, which is bleached and platted into 

 various articles, such as pouches and cigar-cases, of 

 extreme regularity and fineness. Hats of the same 

 material, but coarser, are exported in large quantities, 

 and found well adapted to warm climates. I could 

 obtain very little information respecting the raw 

 material, farther than that it grew on the coast to 

 the northward in great profusion t." 



* Thunberg's Travels, vol. iii. 



t Travels in South America, by Alexander Caldcleugh. Esq. 

 vol. ii. p. 84. 



