Add To This Costume A Sober-Coloured Silk
Parasol, Not One Of Your Green Or Red Young Tent-Like, Brutally
Masculine, Knobby-Sticked Umbrellas, But A Fair, Lady-Like Parasol,
Which, Being Carefully Rolled Up, Is Carried Handle Foremost Right
In The Middle Of The Head, Also For Dandy.
Then a few strings of
turquoise-blue beads, or imitation gold ones, worn round the shapely
throat; and I
Will back my Igalwa or M'pongwe belle against any of
those South Sea Island young ladies we nowadays hear so much about,
thanks to Mr. Stevenson, yea, even though these may be wreathed with
fragrant flowers, and the African lady very rarely goes in for
flowers. The only time I have seen the African ladies wearing them
for ornament has been among these Igalwas, who now and again stud
their night-black hair with pretty little round vividly red blossoms
in a most fetching way. I wonder the Africans do not wear flowers
more frequently, for they are devoted to scent, both men and women.
The Igalwas are a proud race, one of the noble tribes, like the
M'pongwe and the Ajumba. The women do not intermarry with lower-
class tribes, and in their own tribe they are much restricted, owing
to all relations on the mother's side being forbidden to intermarry.
This well-known form of accounting relationships only through the
mother (Mutterrecht) is in a more perfected and elaborated form
among the Igalwa than among any other tribe I am personally
acquainted with; brothers and cousins on the mother's side being in
one class of relationship.
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