Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/141

Rh are sometimes quite handsome and most dignified in bearing. They disfigure themselves in various ways, according to the local fashion, with tattoo-ing, painting in extraordinary manner face and body in colours, enlarging the ear-lobes to such a size that they hang down to the shoulders, wearing all sorts of things in their ears and noses. The women wear bunchy grass petticoats, a girdle of leaves, a wisp of cloth, or nothing at all, except, of course, their ornaments; the men, a wisp of cloth, a shell, the string costume—a piece of string passed round the waist and between the legs—or are absolutely nude. They too, however, wear ornaments of various sorts, and often of great interest and beauty, in the way of head adornments, armlets, anklets, breast ornaments, and ear ornaments. Sometimes they carry their pipe and other things in the ear or under the armlet. They all appear, especially when nude, quite suitably dressed. In fact, though really nude they never appear so, as it seems quite natural and right. Missionaries, with the idea of Christianising or civilising them, sometimes compel them to go half or fully dressed. The result is that they at once contract all sorts of diseases and die off by the score of pulmonary complaints. It is difficult to explain, but numbers of nude natives seem so naturally and suitably dressed that you never realise they are not, and the only immodesty or indecency there is about it is in the minds of those who think otherwise. They have no feeling of shame, for they know of no reason they should feel any, nor is there any.

When the men get European clothes they wear only part at a time, and that generally on the head. A nude native with a hat, or some garment wrapped round his head, is somewhat ridiculous, and when they wear a shirt they look simply