134 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
.there, were made with this material ; and in that climate 
I should never desire any other. The use of hats in¬ 
creased so rapidly, that all the European thread in the 
islands was soon expended. There were no haber¬ 
dashers’ shops at hand, whence a supply could be pro¬ 
cured : recourse was therefore had to native productions. 
Some employed the long filaments of the dried plantain- 
stalk ; and others split the thin bark of the purau into 
-fine threads or fibres, and, though not equal in strength 
to twisted thread, both answered remarkably well. 
The bonnets were in many instances scarcely finished, 
when another difficulty met their possessors. They 
had observed that the wives and daughters of the Mis¬ 
sionaries, however plain their dress, wore a riband and 
strings to their bonnets, and they had often observed a 
greater profusion of trimmings attached to those worn 
by the wives of the captains, or the female passengers, 
in any of the vessels that touched at the islands ; they 
therefore imagined that in point of improvement they 
might almost as well appear without a bonnet, as with 
one destitute of these appendages. These, however, it 
was no easy matter to procure, and they would at 
that time, certainly, have been the last article a cap¬ 
tain or trader would have thought of taking to the 
South Sea Islands for barter. A few of the chief women 
were furnished with an English riband, which was 
considered as valuable as an embroidery of gold would 
be in some circles of society. 
The greater portion of the inhabitants were, however, 
under the necessity of exercising their ingenuity to pro¬ 
vide a substitute. Those they furnished were various, 
and such perhaps as few English females would have 
thought of, A part of a black coat, or a soldier’s red 
