The more usual covering is the bamboo penis-case, which is kept in position by pulling the preputium through a hole in the lower end of the case. There are three or four different patterns of penis-cases, and they are always ornamented with carved designs. Another equally common fashion of covering is the shell; this is an oval or roughly squared segment of a large white sea shell, sometimes as much as six inches in diameter. It is worn on a string which passes through two holes bored in it, and is tied tightly round the loins. The convex surface of the shell faces forwards, and the preputium is pulled upwards and clipped under the lower margin of the shell. Both the bamboo case and the shell are useful as a protection against the leeches and thorns of the jungle.
Small boys go quite naked until they reach the time of puberty, when for a short period they wear a sort of skirt made from the shredded leaves of the pandanus. Though the men like very much to wear round their heads strips of our coloured cloth, they do not normally use any kind of head-gear except on ceremonial occasions, when the men who beat the drums wear elaborate hats ornamented with the plumes of birds of paradise. Many of the men wear arm-bands above the elbow and leg-bands below the knee, made of tightly woven fibre or of fine strips of rattan.
The women are rather more clothed than the men, but it cannot be said that they are at all overdressed. The usual garment consists of a narrow belt of bark cloth or grass round the waist, from which there hang a narrow strip of bark cloth in front, reaching about half way down the thigh, and a wider strip, somewhat after the fashion of the tail of an Englishman’s evening coat, extending as far as the knee behind. In addition to this, many of the women wear a sort of short waistcoat or sleeveless bodice made of plaited grass or fibre with tags or tassels hanging down in a sort of fringe from its lower edge. Newly-married women wear a sort of apron, or rather a long fringe of shredded leaves, which hangs down from the waist.
WOMEN OF WAKATIMI.
(On the left is a widow wearing the bonnet.)
WIDOWS’ WEEDS
The best dressed, or in any case the most dressed, members of the community are the widows, who wear, in addition to the other articles of female attire, what can only be described as a poke bonnet. In some cases the bonnet projects so far in front of the face as to obscure the features, in some it is of a conical design, and in others it resembles in shape nothing so much as the morion of a mediaeval man-at-arms.
Like the waistcoats worn by the women, the bonnets are made of ingeniously plaited fibre, and both of these look well when they are newly made, but they very quickly become hideous with damp and dirt, and the wearer is a person to be shunned. The small girls, unlike the boys, wear a narrow strip of bark cloth tucked between the legs almost as soon as they can walk. It is perhaps worth mentioning that these people have the art of sewing; they make eyed needles out of sharp fish bones, and with strands of fibre they contrive to sew pieces of bark cloth very neatly together.
There are no milk-producing domesticated animals in the country, so the women suckle their infants for a very long time, and you may occasionally see children of (apparently) three or four years old at their mothers’ breasts; but whether young or old, it is very difficult to estimate the age of these people. In the course of a year we saw little children grow into active boys and we saw young men become middle-aged. I should say—but this is pure speculation—that a man is old at forty years and a woman at an even earlier age; it seems probable, too, that the life of a woman is shorter than that of a man.