On grand occasions, they cast over their ordinary dress an upper garment, called a tiputa, the cloth of which they manufacture themselves from the bark of the bread and cocoa trees.  The bark, while still tender, is beaten between two stones, until it is as thin as paper; it is then coloured yellow and brown.

One Sunday I went into the meeting-house to see the people assembled there. {73} Before entering they all laid aside their flowers, with which they again ornamented themselves at their departure.  Some of the women had black satin blouses on, and European bonnets of an exceedingly ancient date.  It would not be easy to find a more ugly sight than that of their plump, heavy heads and faces in these old-fashioned bonnets.

During the singing of the psalms there was some degree of attention, and many of the congregation joined in very becomingly; but while the clergyman was performing the service, I could not remark the slightest degree of devotion in any of them; the children played, joked, and ate, while the adults gossiped or slept; and although I was assured that many could read and even write, I saw only two old men who made any use of their Bibles.

The men are a remarkably strong and vigorous race, six feet being by no means an uncommon height amongst them.  The women, likewise, are very tall, but too muscular—­they might even be termed unwieldy.  The features of the men are handsomer than those of the women.  They have beautiful teeth and fine dark eyes, but generally a large mouth, thick lips, and an ugly nose, the cartilage being slightly crushed when the child is born, so that the nose becomes flat and broad.  This fashion appears to be most popular with the females, for their noses are the ugliest.  Their hair is jet black and thick, but coarse; the women and girls generally wear it plaited in two knots.  The colour of their skin is a copper-brown.  All the natives are tattooed, generally from the hips half down the legs, and frequently this mode of ornamenting themselves is extended to the hands, feet, or other parts of the body.  The designs resemble arabesques; they are regular and artistic in their composition, and executed with much taste.

That the population of this place should be so vigorous and well-formed is the more surprising, if we reflect on their depraved and immoral kind of life.  Little girls of seven or eight years old have their lovers of twelve or fourteen, and their parents are quite proud of the fact.  The more lovers a girl has the more she is respected.  As long as she is not married she leads a most dissolute life, and it is said that not all the married women make the most faithful wives possible.