It is a curious thing that a black man never looks naked; a white man undressed looks a naked man, so too does a yellow man, but a Papuan—and nobody could wear much less in the way of clothes than he does—always seems to be sufficiently clad. The dress of the Papuan men, as has been suggested above, is scanty in the extreme. They have, or had before we visited them, no cloth except a very inferior bark cloth made from the bark of a species of fig tree. Some of the men wear a narrow strip of this bark cloth, which hangs down in front from a string round the loins and keeps up an ineffectual pretence of decency.
The more usual covering is the bamboo penis-case, which is kept in position by pulling the preputium through a hole in the lower end of the case. There are three or four different patterns of penis-cases, and they are always ornamented with carved designs. Another equally common fashion of covering is the shell; this is an oval or roughly squared segment of a large white sea shell, sometimes as much as six inches in diameter. It is worn on a string which passes through two holes bored in it, and is tied tightly round the loins. The convex surface of the shell faces forwards, and the preputium is pulled upwards and clipped under the lower margin of the shell. Both the bamboo case and the shell are useful as a protection against the leeches and thorns of the jungle.
Small boys go quite naked until they reach the time of puberty, when for a short period they wear a sort of skirt made from the shredded leaves of the _pandanus_. Though the men like very much to wear round their heads strips of our coloured cloth, they do not normally use any kind of head-gear except on ceremonial occasions, when the men who beat the drums wear elaborate hats ornamented with the plumes of birds of paradise. Many of the men wear arm-bands above the elbow and leg-bands below the knee, made of tightly woven fibre or of fine strips of rattan.
The women are rather more clothed than the men, but it cannot be said that they are at all overdressed. The usual garment consists of a narrow belt of bark cloth or grass round the waist, from which there hang a narrow strip of bark cloth in front, reaching about half way down the thigh, and a wider strip, somewhat after the fashion of the tail of an Englishman’s evening coat, extending as far as the knee behind. In addition to this, many of the women wear a sort of short waistcoat or sleeveless bodice made of plaited grass or fibre with tags or tassels hanging down in a sort of fringe from its lower edge. Newly-married women wear a sort of apron, or rather a long fringe of shredded leaves, which hangs down from the waist.