1769 DRESS OF OTAHITE 131 
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, dye- 
ing, 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 ¢ebuta, 
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. 
