LETTER II.] 



A BROWN CROWD. 



IS 



dresses were black, but many of those worn by the younger 

 women were of pure white, crimson, yellow, scarlet, blue, or 

 light green. The men displayed their lithe, graceful figures to 

 the best advantage in white trousers and gay Garibaldi shirts. 

 A few of the women wore coloured handkerchiefs twined round 

 their hair, but generally both men and women wore straw hats, 

 Avhich the men set jauntily on one side of their heads, and 

 heightened their picturesqueness yet more by bandana hand- 

 kerchiefs of rich, bright colours round their necks, knotted 

 loosely on the left side, with a grace to which, I think, no 

 Anglo-Saxon dandy could attain. Without an exception the~\ 

 men and women wore wreaths and garlands of flowers, carmine, 

 orange, or pure white, twined round their hats, and thrown 

 carelessly round their throats, flowers unknown to me, but 

 redolent of the tropics in fragrance and colour. Many of the 

 young beauties wore the gorgeous blossom of the red hibiscus 

 among their abundant, unconfmed, black hair, and many, be- 

 sides the garlands, wore festoons of a sweet-scented vine, or of 

 an exquisitely beautiful fern, knotted behind, and hanging half- J 

 way down their dresses. These adornments of natural flowers 

 are most attractive. Chinamen, all alike, very yellow, with 

 almond-shaped eyes, youthful, hairless faces, long pigtails, spot- 

 lessly clean clothes, and an expression of mingled cunning and 

 simplicity, " foreigners," half-whites, a few negroes, and a very 

 few dark-skinned Polynesians from the far-off South Seas, made 

 up the rest of the rainbow-tinted crowd. 



The "foreign" ladies, who were there in great numbers, 

 generally wore simple, light prints or muslins, and white straw 

 hats, and many of them so far conformed to native custom as 

 to wear natural flowers round their hats and throats. But 

 where were the hard, angular, careworn, sallow, passionate 

 faces of men and women, such as form the majority of every 

 crowd at home, as well as in America and Australia? The 

 conditions of life must surely be easier here, and people must 

 have found rest from some of its burdensome conventionalities. 

 The foreign ladies, in their simple, tasteful, fresh attire, inno- 

 cent of the humpings and bunchings, the monstrosities and 

 deformities of ultra-fashionable bad taste, beamed with cheer- 

 fulness, friendliness, and kindliness. Men and women looked 

 as easy, contented, and happy as if care never came near them. 

 I never saw such healthy, bright complexions as among the 

 women, or such " sparkling smiles," or such a diffusion of 

 feminine grace and graciousness anywhere. 



