Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 - No. 0399
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[Page 399]
Manners & Customs of the S. Sea Islands
only for beauty. Our European ladies have found the Convenience of patches, & something of that kind is more usefull here, where the best complexions are much inferior to theirs, & yet whiteness is esteemd the first Essential in beauty.
They are certainly as cleanly a people as any under the sun except in their lousyness, every one of them wash their whole bodies in the running water as soon as they rise in the morn, at noon, & before they sleep at night; & if they have not such water near their houses as often happens, they will go a good way to it; as for their lice had they the means only they would certainly be as free from them as any inhabitants of so warm a climate could be. Those to whoom combs were given provd this, for those who I was best acquainted with kept themselves very clear while we staid by the use of them, as for their eating lice it is a custom which none but children & those of the inferior people can be chargd with. Their cloths also as well as their persons are kept almost without spot or stain, the superiour people spend much of their time in repairing, dying, &c the cloth, which seems to be a genteel amusement for the ladies here as it is in Europe.
Their Clothes are either of a kind of cloth made of the Bark of a tree, or matts of