Albinos.--E.]

It is a custom in most countries where the inhabitants have long hair,
for the men to cut it short, and the women to pride themselves in its
length. Here, however, the contrary custom prevails; the women always
cut it short round their ears, and the men, except the fishers, who are
almost continually in the water, suffer it to flow in large waves over
their shoulders, or tie it up in a bunch on the top of their heads.

They have a custom also of anointing their heads with what they call
_monoe, an oil expressed from the cocoa-nut, in which some sweet herbs
or flowers have been infused: As the oil is generally rancid, the smell
is at first very disagreeable to a European; and as they live in a hot
country, and have no such thing as a comb, they are not able to keep
their heads free from lice, which the children and common people
sometimes pick out and eat; a hateful custom, wholly different from
their manners in every other particular; for they are delicate and
cleanly almost without example, and those to whom we distributed combs,
soon delivered themselves from vermin, with a diligence which showed
that they were not more odious to us than to them.[5]

[Footnote 5: This remark is scarcely consistent with what is related in
the missionary account, by which it appears that these vermin are
considered by the Otaheitans much in the same light as certain animals
were once in our own land, viz. royal property. The passage is too
curious to be omitted. It displays a very remarkable instance of that
ease and elegance, with which crowned heads can occasionally employ
themselves for the good of their subjects. "The mode of carrying the
king and queen is with their legs hanging down before, seated on the
shoulders and leaning on the head of their carriers, and very frequently