At the Marquesas and Washington Islands, “the Tahunas, or priests, have a distinctive dress, consisting of a cap, formed from a cocoa-nut leaf. A part of the stem, six or eight inches in length, is placed perpendicularly over the forehead, and the leaflets still attached to it, are passed round the head, on each side, and neatly fastened together behind.
“Besides this article on the head, they wear a cape of the same material. In this the stem is split till within an inch or two of one of the ends: it is then passed round the neck, so that the extremities rest on each shoulder, and the separated ends are tied together. The ribs running through the leaflets being taken out, they hang over the chest and back.
“These articles are usually worn by them on ordinary occasions, and always when in discharge of the services connected with their office.”[136]
At the same islands, one of their traditions gives an account of the introduction of the cocoa-nut tree. It is, “that a god, on a visit to them from an island which they call Oatamaaua, finding them destitute of this important tree, fetched it to them in a stone canoe: the whole transaction being described in a minute and equally incredible manner.”[137]
Among the articles brought off to the ships for barter at the Island of Tongatabu, were small calabashes, (fruit of Melodinus scandens,) filled with cocoa-nut oil perfumed by the sandal-wood, or various sweet-scented flowers, indigenous to the island. With this oil both the males and females anoint the upper parts of the body very profusely, giving a softness and glossiness to their dark-brown skins, and preventing the fervid rays of the sun from having any effect upon them, exposed as their naked bodies are to its influence.
The Papuas of New Guinea “in general wear a thin stuff that comes from the cocoa-nut tree, and resembles a coarse kind of cloth, tied forward round the middle, and up behind between the thighs.”[138]
The outer coarse fibres of the husk of the cocoa-nut, is made into a kind of rope, called Talie, api, or fire-rope, by the Javanese: it retains the fire for a long time, and is used in Batavia for lighting cigars.
The sinnet, made from the inner fibre of the husk of the cocoa-nut, can be procured in abundance at the island of Tongatabu, and other islands in the Polynesian Archipelago, where it is used for canoes, binding the rafters of their houses, and a variety of other purposes, both ornamental and useful.