CHAPTER XVII
Native clothing and ornaments—Their arts and industries, their canoes and weapons, and their way of fishing.
In Malekula, Efaté, and Tanna the natives wear as many adornments and cram as many ornaments on their bodies as they can, and since this weakness of theirs has been found out, both visitors and missionaries trade on it, when endeavouring to get on the right side of them. Everybody going to these places nowadays takes with him a good supply of trumpery adornments, and exchanges them for native things of ten times their value. Ivory rings and shell rings were the most precious ornaments the New Hebrideans originally wore, but the less wealthy covered themselves with armlets, fibre belts, flowers, and if they could get a comb to stick in their hair they fancied themselves immensely superior to those who had not such a mark of distinction. Trade beads are now added to their possessions, and they work them into most artistic {173} patterns and wear them round their necks. A small mirror will often be seen hanging from a native’s ear-ring, and many other strange combinations of savagedom mixed with civilisation are met with in these islands to-day. A native wearing a calico loin-cloth and a top-hat poised on his woolly head and kept in position by a string round his chin is not an uncommon sight. Another may be seen wearing a pair of knee-breeches, a tennis shirt, with the collar turned up, and a trader’s hat. Another, perhaps dispensing with the breeches, will wear only the hat and shirt. Altogether they seem to do their very best to imitate an English clown, though of course they are not aware of the fact.