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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Mrs. C 



THE TAIL AT JACMEL, WHERE MANN POLITICAL PRISONERS DIED, AS A RESU 

 [NSANITARY CONDITIONS, BEFORE THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION" 



Miller 

 LT OF 



development of the men made one regret 

 that they did not revert more to the most 

 defensible African custom of wearing 

 very little clothing-, for they would evi- 

 dently have exhibited forms that would 

 he a delight to the sculptor's eye. 



As it is. their clothing is often pictur- 

 esque, if they can only he induced not to 

 wear a discarded military costume. The 

 head is shaded with a large high-crowned. 

 broad-brimmed straw hat. or rather a hat 

 plaited from dried palm leaves. Very 

 striking patterns of black or red are 

 woven into these hats. The writer of 

 this article brought home a number of 

 Haitian straw hats to England, where 

 they proved to be singularly well adapted 

 to the prevailing mode. and. with the ad- 

 dition of a piece of ribbon or a bunch of 

 artificial flowers, are now being credit- 

 ably worn in English country towns. 



The clothes affected by the Haitian men 

 (putting aside the military uniform for 

 which they all crave) consist of trousers 

 and a rather becoming smock-frock, de- 

 rived, no doubt, from the French blous 

 but completed and embroidered, and re- 



sembling very often the smock-frock once 

 worn by the English peasantry. 



THE BRIGHT KERCHIEF DISTINGUISHES 

 THE HAITIAN COSTUME 



The garments of the peasant women 

 are usually long-skirted blue robes, but 

 in any degree of affluence these can be 

 covered with furbelows and lappets. A 

 bright-colored handkerchief is wound 

 tightly round the hair, and over this, for 

 journeying, is poised a broad-brimmed, 

 low-crowned hat which is held on by a 

 leather strap passed under the chin. 



It seems to be a point of fashion that 

 this leathern strap shall terminate in two 

 little twiddles of leather, so that the 

 women often look like negro men with 

 sparse, twisted, goatee beards. 



As one descends from the austere 

 heights with their classical pine trees, one 

 enters a region of luscious beauty, espe- 

 cially where the hand of the French colo- 

 nist of the eighteenth century has shaped 

 or adorned the landscape. 



The foliage is magnificent and gor- 

 geous in hues. The feathery, pinnate- 

 leaved, golden-flowered, honey-scented 



