Joseph Banks - Endeavour Journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 - No. 0400
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[Page 400]
Manners & Customs of the S. Sea Islands
several different sorts, of all these & their manner of making them I shall speak in another place, here I shall only mention their method of covering & adorning their Persons, which is of course most various as they never form dresses, or sew any two things together it must be a peice of cloth which is generaly 2 yards wide & 11 long, is sufficient Clothing for any one, & this they put on in a thousand different ways, often very genteely. Their dress of form however is in the women, a kind of Peticoat (Parou) wrappd round their hipps, & reaching about the middle of their leggs; 1, 2 or 3 peices of thick cloth about 2½ yards long & one wide, Te buta through a hole in the middle of which they put their heads, & suffer the sides of it to hang before & behind them, the open sides edges serving for their arms to be at liberty to give their arms liberty of moving; round the ends of this, about as high as their wastes, are tied 2 or 3 large peices of thin Cloth, & sometimes another or two thrown over their shoulders loosely, for the rich seem to shew their greatest pride in wearing a large quantity of cloth. The dress of the men differs but little from this, their bodys are rather more bare, & instead of the petticoat they have a peice of Cloth passd between their leggs & round their waists Maro which keeps up the strictest rules of decency, & at the same time gives them rather more liberty to use their