Some of them hid themselves
among the rocks, and the rest crouched down in the sea till they
had made themselves a girdle and apron of such weeds as they
could find, and when they came out, even with this veil, we could
see that their modesty suffered much pain by our presence."
(Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 257-258.)
In Rotuma, in Polynesia, where the women enjoy much freedom, but
where, at all events in old days, married people were, as a rule,
faithful to each other, "the language is not chaste according to
our ideas, and there is a great deal of freedom in speaking of
immoral vices. In this connection a man and his wife will speak
freely to one another before their friends. I am informed,
though, by European traders well conversant with the language,
that there are grades of language, and that certain coarse
phrases would never be used to any decent woman; so that
probably, in their way, they have much modesty, only we cannot
appreciate it." (J. Stanley Gardiner, "The Natives of Rotuma,"
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May, 1898, p. 481.)
The men of Rotuma, says the same writer, are very clean, the
women also, bathing twice a day in the sea; but "bathing in
public without the _kukuluga_, or _sulu_ [loin-cloth, which is
the ordinary dress], around the waist is absolutely unheard of,
and would be much looked down upon.
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