The Women Who May Not Be Busy Sewing Are Busy Doing Each Other's
Hair.
Hair-dressing is quite an art among the Igalwa and M'pongwe
women, and their hair is very beautiful; very crinkly, but fine.
It
is plaited up, close to the head, partings between the plaits making
elaborate parterres. Into the beds of plaited hair are stuck long
pins of river ivory (hippo), decorated with black tracery and
openwork, and made by their good men. A lady will stick as many of
these into her hair as she can get, but the prevailing mode is to
have one stuck in behind each ear, showing their broad, long heads
above like two horns; they are exceedingly becoming to these black
but comely ladies, verily, I think, the comeliest ladies I have ever
seen on the Coast. Very black they are, blacker than many of their
neighbours, always blacker than the Fans, and although their skin
lacks that velvety pile of the true negro, it is not too shiny, but
it is fine and usually unblemished, and their figures are charmingly
rounded, their hands and feet small, almost as small as a high-class
Calabar woman's, and their eyes large, lustrous, soft and brown, and
their teeth as white as the sea surf and undisfigured by filing.
The native dress for men and women alike is the cloth or paun. The
men wear it by rolling the upper line round the waist, and in
addition they frequently wear a singlet or a flannel shirt worn MORE
AFRICANO, flowing free.
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