MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 
has a hole running up its entire length through 
which the grass fibre is threaded, and then the 
ornament is woven either in a diagonal pattern or 
in straight horizontal stripes, with strands of various 
colours. They often actually knit it round the arm 
or the wrist quite tightly, and when this is done 
the ornament is permanent, and is never removed 
until it is worn out. Sometimes they wear a bunch 
of flowers stuck into the armlet, and these not par- 
ticularly fragrant, but the Papuans are persuaded that 
it is quite otherwise, and, pointing to their bouquet, 
they say with delightful naiveté, ‘“‘ Midina Namu”— 
‘‘Good smell.” Alas! it is really the reverse, and 
the wearers of flowers in this manner are by no 
means pleasant neighbours. 
They also wear anklets of feathers and strings of 
beads, and in some of their dances I have seen them 
decorated with huge bunches of grass, which hang 
from between the shoulders and sweep the ground. 
Some also affect a light band at the knee, and light 
cane anklets which rattle as they dance. 
Indispensable to the men is the little bag which 
carries their few personal possessions: their betel-nut, 
their lime gourd and knife, the invariable adjunct 
of the delightful vice of chewing betel—as every 
traveller in the Malay Archipelago knows—and the 
“Paw-paw,” a fruit with which a little European 
tobacco is often eaten. ‘The coast women carry a 
much larger bag of knitted fibre, which may be best 
described by saying that it resembles a hammock 
with the ends tied together; in this they carry 
potatoes and wood, and sometimes it is borne upon 
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