Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/419

 red, white, and blue dresses. There were loose-fitting blouses and diffusive skirts, and as it were a reproach to these, close-fitting gowns on young wahines. "Did you see that Maori woman in a hobble skirt?" a friend asked me.

"No; where is she?" I inquired.

"She just disappeared in the crowd with a bloke," answered he.

Soon after I heard a voice exclaim: "Get off my dress."

The speaker was a big Maori woman, and as she gave this command she struck a white woman, who accidentally had trod on her skirt.

There were ribbons and sashes of all hues; and the premier color of Ireland was not the least of these. Incongruities of dress were common. Although the day was hot, one woman wore an ostrich boa, with a gayly-colored parasol raised above it, and another woman carried a fur muff. Occasionally there was a flash of the truly picturesque,—one, a girl poi dancer wearing a flax mat, another, a warlike man bared to the waist and kilted with flax. With young men colored waistcoats found favor.

Ornaments were at all places conspicuous, especially large greenstone pendants and greenstone earrings with black ribbons attached. One pendant looked like a papercutter. There also were silver-tipped boar tusks; in large frames photographs of men; cheap, gaudy jewelry; metaled and tinted flower and leaf; and