Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/183

Rh hair, some of them being fully three feet in diameter. Hair-dressing seems to be one of the fine arts in Feejee, and the barber is a most important personage, though less so to-day than formerly. And how do you suppose they managed to get such enormous mops on their heads?

"Well, the naturally frizzly hair is 'improved' by the barber. Each particular hair is seized and pulled with tweezers until it stands out straight, helped of course by the other hairs which have been served the same way. The hair-dressing of a Feejeean dandy takes the greater part of the time, and when he wishes to appear in specially fine style he must be for a whole day at least in the hands of his barber. When the hair has been stretched out to the proper degree, it is wrapped with fine tappa or imported muslin, and in this condition presents a very curious appearance.

"The office of barber to the King was such a sacred one that the royal barbers were tabu, or forbidden to do anything else. They could not even feed, dress, or undress themselves, or do anything whatever with the hands which were to be used solely on the royal coiffure. And yet there were plenty of men who coveted this honorable occupation in spite of its manifest inconveniences.

"They are a polite people—at least we are told so, and certainly have seen nothing to lead us to think otherwise. The hotel-keeper says the Feejeean boys make excellent table servants, and the native policemen along the streets seem fully equal to any we have ever seen outside of a European or American city. Like all Polynesians, the Feejeeans are very ceremonious, and great sticklers for etiquette. The chiefs and nobles are surrounded with ceremony, and one needs to be as careful in approaching them as in approaching the Queen of England or the Emperor of Russia.

"Here in Suva most of the people have adopted European dress, or a modification of the native one, but back in the mountains they adhere to their primitive garments. These are strips of cloth around the waist, and owing to this enormous array of hair I have just told about they