Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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One day a party of village maidens, searching for the gay flowers of the forest, with which to decorate themselves for some festival, approached my hiding-place. I observed their gambols on a wooded slope, as they laughed, and danced, and sang with gladsome air, and I would willingly have joined the merry throng had not prudence forbidden. The queen of the company, to whom a certain deference was always paid, was a handsome girl of fifteen. Her dress and mien proclaimed her to be a lady in the land.

The elegant simplicity of her attire was well calculated to heighten the charm of her fine figure. She wore a cincture of hibiscus fibres a few inches broad, forming a girdle of beautifully variegated braidwork, from which depended a fringe of coloured grasses ten inches deep, ornamented with small shells and berries. The long fringe playing on her softly-rounded limbs had a most graceful appearance. Her ears were decorated with the brilliant blossom of the Chinese rose; garlands of bright flowers were hung on her neck, and a chaplet of pure white ivi blossoms lay on her brow, emitting a delicious perfume, and contrasting well with the glow of her dusk bosom. The likus or petticoats worn by her handmaidens were much scantier. They were of a bright, jet black colour, made from the stem of a parasite called waloa. They did not meet by several inches at the hip, and they were put on in such a coquettish way that they gave the idea that they must fall off every moment.