Page:A voyage round the world, in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (IA b30413849 0001).pdf/256

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they set a high value, and which indeed gave them a very comfortable appearance in the cold weather that now began to be felt. Many of their cloaks, made of the fibres of the New Zeeland flax (phormium), were new, and had elegant borders, very symmetrically wrought in red, black, and white; so that they might have passed for the work of a much more polished nation. The black is so strongly fixed upon their stuffs, that it deserves the attention of our manufacturers, who greatly want a lasting dye of that colour on vegetable productions; but the little progress we could make in their language, rendered it impossible to gain intelligence from them on this point. Their cloaks are square pieces, of which two corners were fastened on the breast by strings, and stuck together by a bodkin of bone, whalebone, or green jadde. A belt of a sort of close matting of grass, confined the lower extremities of their cloak to their loins, beyond which it extended at least to the middle of the thigh, and sometimes to the mid-leg. Notwithstanding this superiority over the natives of Queen Charlotte's Sound, they resembled them perfectly in their uncleanliness, and swarms of vermin marched about in their cloaths. Their hair was dressed in the fashion of the country tied on the crown, greased, and stuck with white feathers; and several of them had large combs, of some cetaceous animal's bone, stuck upright just