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The sun blazed pitilessly in the cloudless sky, down on land and river, and on the fugitive nuns who had spread their white head-cloths above them for an awning and sat in dull lethargy, awaiting what might he before them. The water-jar passed from hand to band; but the more they drank the more acute was their discomfort, and their longing for some other refreshment.
The men wear either 'sarongs' or trousers, or both, and a cotton jacket, and are always armed either with kreeses or chopping-knives, carried in their belts; the weapons are for cutting down cocoanuts and bamboo, and for protection against snakes and tigers. Both sexes wear their hair long, the men with head-cloths and the women with flowers and herbs, and all go bare-footed.
Don't see any costumes. Where are the sheepskin suits? the red skirts and white head-cloths? Girl with flowers. Oh, how lovely! Mercy on us, there's an officer staring up here, and I never saw him!
All the women dress in garments of home-woven cotton, and the red head-cloths, so characteristic a feature of the dress of men and boys, are woven here from thread already dyed, bought in other places. The little figures of animals or birds or geometrical designs worked in them in green or yellow worsted are woven in, at the time of making the cloths, with bright bits of wool.
As the party entered several women held their head-cloths to their faces and stole silently out, leaving none there but three grim-looking Mullahs, who had evidently been playing the parts of surgeons to the injured Emir, and who scowled angrily at the little party that now entered the room.
The scene under the rickety trellises was the more suggestive of Teniers that there were no costumes to make it too Italian. Murray's attractive statement on this point was, like many of his statements, much truer twenty years ago than to-day. Costume is gone or fast going; I saw among the women not a single crimson bodice and not a couple of classic head-cloths.
The men and boys, with their red head-cloths or neck-cloths, went forth from time to time in groups upon some public errand. Towards evening, eight or ten little fellows came from the forest with bundles of firewood upon their heads and great machetes hanging at their sides.
Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans the whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black are twisting and writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes.
The women and girls in full skirts, white, red or yellow waists with laced bodices of darker color, fancy head-cloths and startling shawls, tempt the stares of the foreigner as they pass him on their way to church or to a dance.
The sun blazed pitilessly in the cloudless sky, down on land and river, and on the fugitive nuns who had spread their white head-cloths above them for an awning and sat in dull lethargy, awaiting what might he before them. The water-jar passed from hand to band; but the more they drank the more acute was their discomfort, and their longing for some other refreshment.
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