SUBSTITUTES FOR RIBANDS. 403 
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 provide 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 jacket, cut into 
strips about two inches wide, was greatly esteem¬ 
ed. Next to this, ribands of native cloth, dyed 
with showy colours, were employed; while others 
used a string of the bark from a branch of the 
purau, with the outer rind scraped off, the inner 
bark washed and bleached, passed round the bon¬ 
net, and tied under the chin. 
Trimmings are not so scarce now as formerly, 
but the supply taken is still inadequate to the 
requirements of the people, among whom bonnets 
and hats are now so common, that before I left 
the Leeward Islands, scarcely a man, woman, or 
child was to be seen out of doors without one- 
many of them possessing two, and sometimes three 
or four. 
They are made entirely by the females, who 
manufacture not only for themselves, their hus¬ 
bands, and their children, but, in some of the 
stations, several have formed themselves into a 
kind of society, for the purpose of making bonnets 
for the poor and the aged, who are unable to 
make for themselves. The bonnets are either sewn 
together, or woven throughout, after the manner of 
Leghorns, and are made not only with the leaves 
of the mau, and the bark of the purau, but of the 
fine white layers of the inside of the plantain stalk, 
the leaf of the sugar-cane, and a strong and beau¬ 
tiful species of fine grass. 
2 d 2 
