A few of the women wore
coloured handkerchiefs twined round their hair, but generally both
men and women wore straw hats, which the men set jauntily on one
side of their heads, and aggravated their appearance yet more by
bandana handkerchiefs of rich bright colours round their necks,
knotted loosely on the left side, with a grace to which, I think, no
Anglo-Saxon dandy could attain. Without an exception the men and
women wore wreaths and garlands of flowers, carmine, orange, or pure
white, twined round their hats, and thrown carelessly round their
necks, flowers unknown to me, but redolent of the tropics in
fragrance and colour. Many of the young beauties wore the gorgeous
blossom of the red hibiscus among their abundant, unconfined, black
hair, and many, besides the garlands, wore festoons of a sweet-
scented vine, or of an exquisitely beautiful fern, knotted behind
and hanging half-way down their dresses. These adornments of
natural flowers are most attractive. Chinamen, all alike, very
yellow, with almond-shaped eyes, youthful, hairless faces, long
pigtails, spotlessly clean clothes, and an expression of mingled
cunning and simplicity, "foreigners," half-whites, a few negroes,
and a very few dark-skinned Polynesians from the far-off South Seas,
made up the rest of the rainbow-tinted crowd.
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