United States or Tokelau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Item by item the old dame prices the goods. The little group of young married women, with babies tied in a bundle behind them, or half-naked children clinging to their loin-cloths, nods approval. But Salam's face is a study. In place of contemptuous indifference there is now rising anger, terrible to behold. His brows are knitted, his eyes flame, his beard seems to bristle with rage.
The smoke became thicker, and suddenly a gleam of flame arose, caught the dust, and was fed with twigs and cocoanut-husks by scores of trembling brown hands. In a few minutes a roaring fire was blazing on the sward. Pipes sprang from loin-cloths or from behind ears, and the incense of tobacco lifted on the still air of the evening.
Conspicuous among these was one figure, probably that of a Queen, dressed in magnificent apparel, while there were also remains of the figures of two youths, wearing gold and silver belts and loin-cloths, one of them bearing a fluted marble vase with a silver base.
Here was a savage chief sitting under an immense parasol in the stern of his state canoe, propelled by a score of naked, black paddlers in white loin-cloths and scarlet cricket-caps, coming to call on us.
In twos and threes and groups they strayed along, shaking hands and uttering the Tahitian word of greeting Ioarana, pronounced yo-rah-nah. The men, big strapping fellows, were in loin-cloths, with here and there no shirt, while the women wore the universal ahu, a sort of adult pinafore that flows in graceful lines from the shoulders to the ground.
To these leaves were attached pendant white feathers. Everybody was dressed in his best clout, and the women in their best loin-cloths and in all their finery of gold beads and agate necklaces. "Nagukaran is one ranchería of several in a very large valley.
Her crew were chasing steam through the shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the forward donkey-engine; and where oakum failed to plug a crack, they stripped off their loin-cloths for lapping, and swore, half-boiled and mother-naked. That rose easily enough, and was hauled through the skylight and on to the deck, many hands assisting the doubtful steam.
Sheldon knelt beside him, the house-boys grouped around, their white singlets and loin-cloths peculiarly at variance with their dark skins and savage countenances, their huge ear-plugs and carved and glistening nose-rings. Sheldon tottered to his feet at last, and half-fell into the steamer-chair. Oppressive as the heat had been, it was now even more oppressive. It was difficult to breathe.
At the best of times they wear a sort of dirty cotton sheet round their shoulders, but when they go into battle they leave that behind them, and fight only in their loin-cloths." "I have heard," an old soldier said, "from some of our chaps who fought in the Indian mutiny, that they often found a lot of money and jewels and things in those loin-cloths of the sepoys."
Even more apparent is the influence of Antonio Pollaiuolo, in the great realism with which the subject is treated, and in such superficial resemblances as the type of head of the executioner who binds the hands of Christ, and the characteristic striped loin-cloths.
Word Of The Day