Ii8 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
fastened in their hair. Though totally unacquainted 
with what we are accustomed to call artificial flowers, 
yet the brilliant and varied odoriferous plants, that 
grew spontaneously among their mountains or their 
valleys, did not sufiice to gratify their wishes; they 
were therefore accustomed to manufacture a kind of 
artificial flowers, by extracting the petals and leaflets 
of the most fragrant plants and flowers, and fastening 
them with fine native thread, to the wiry stalk of the 
cocoa-nut leaf, which they saturated with monoi, or 
scented oil, and wore in each ear, or fixed in the native 
bonnet, made with the rich yellow cocoa-nut leaf. 
The men, though unaccustomed to adorn their hair 
with flowers, were careful of preserving and dressing 
it. They generally wore it long, and often fastened 
in a graceful braid on the crown, or on each side of 
the head, and spent not a small portion of their 
time in washing and perfuming it with scented oil, 
combing and adjusting it. When it was short, they 
sometimes dressed it with the gum of the bread-fruit 
tree, which gave it a shining appearance, and fixed it 
as straight as if it had been stiffened with rosin. The 
open air was the general dressing-place of both 
sexes; and a group of females might often be seen 
sitting under the shade of a clump of wide-spreading 
trees, or in the cool mountain-stream, employing them¬ 
selves for hours together in arranging the curls of 
the hair, weaving the wreaths of flowers, and filling 
the air with their perfumes. Their comb was a rude 
invention of their own, formed by fixing together thin 
strips of the bamboo-cane. Their mirror was one 
supplied by nature, and consisted in the clear water 
of the stream, contained in a cocoa-nut shell. 
