1770 TATTOWING DRESS 



233 



patches of it mixed with oil, which consequently never 

 dries. This latter is generally practised by the women, and 

 was not universally condemned by us, for if any of us had 

 unthinkingly ravished a kiss from one of these fair savages, 

 our transgressions were written in most legible characters 

 on our noses, which our companions could not fail to see on 

 our first interview. 



The common dress of these people is certainly to a 

 stranger one of the most uncouth and extraordinary sights 

 that can be imagined. It is made of the leaves of the flag 

 described before, each being split into three or four slips ; 

 and these, as soon as they are dry, are woven into a 

 kind of stuff between netting and cloth, out of the upper 

 side of which all the ends, of eight or nine inches, are 

 suffered to hang in the same manner as thrums out of 

 a thrum mat. Of these pieces of cloth two serve for 

 a complete dress : one is tied over the shoulders, and 

 reaches to about their knees ; the other is tied about the 

 waist, and reaches to near the ground. But they seldom 

 wear more than one of these, and when they have it on 

 resemble not a little a thatched house. These dresses, 

 however, ugly as they are, are well adapted for their con- 

 venience, as they often sleep in the open air, and live some 

 time without the least shelter, even from rain, so that they 

 must trust entirely to their clothes as the only chance they 

 have of keeping themselves dry. For this they are certainly 

 not ill adapted, as every strip of leaf becomes in that case 

 a kind of gutter which serves to conduct the rain down, and 

 hinder it from soaking through the cloth beneath. 



Besides this they have several kinds of cloth which are 

 smooth, and ingeniously worked; these are chiefly of two sorts, 

 one coarse as our coarsest canvas, and ten times stronger, but 

 much like it in the lying of the threads ; the other is formed 

 by many threads running lengthwise, and a few only cross- 

 ing them to tie them together. This last sort is sometimes 

 striped, and always very pretty ; for the threads that com- 

 pose it are prepared so as to shine almost as much as silk. 

 To both these they work borders of different colours in fine 



