Their dress is manufactured from the wool of the vicunna, and consists of a shirt, vest, short close breeches, and a cloak or poncho, having an opening in the middle to admit the head, which descends all round as low as the knees. This cloak, which leaves the arms at liberty, and can be thrown back at pleasure, is so convenient for riding, and so excellent a protection from wind and rain, that it is now commonly adopted by the Spanish inhabitants of Chili, Peru, and Paraguay. The shirt, vest, and breeches, are always of a greenish blue, or turquois colour, which is the uniform of the nation. Among persons of ordinary rank, the _poncho_, or native cloak, is also of the same national colour; but those of the higher classes have it of different colours, as white, red, or blue, with stripes a span broad, on which figures of flowers and animals are wrought in different colours with much ingenuity, and the borders are ornamented with handsome fringes. Some of these _ponchos_ are of so fine a texture and richly ornamented as to sell for 100 or even 150 dollars. Their only head-dress is a fillet or bandage of embroidered wool, which they ornament in time of war with a number of beautiful feathers. Round the waist they wear a long sash or girdle of woollen, handsomely wrought; and persons of rank have leather sandals, and woollen boots, but the common people are always bare-footed. The dress of the women is entirely of wool, and the national greenish blue colour, consisting of a tunic or gown without sleeves reaching to the feet, fastened at the shoulder by silver buckles, and girt round the waist by a girdle; over which gown they wear a short cloak, which is fastened before by a silver buckle. They wear their hair in several long braided tresses, flowing negligently over their shoulders, and decorate their heads with false emeralds and a variety of trinkets. They wear square ear-rings of silver, and have necklaces and bracelets of glass-beads, and silver rings on all their fingers. Like all the other tribes in Chili, before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Araucanians still continue to construct their houses or huts rather of a square form, of wood plaistered with clay, and covered with rushes, though some use a species of bricks; and as they are all polygamists, the size of their houses is proportioned to the number of women they are able to maintain. The interior of their houses is very simple, and the furniture calculated only to serve the most necessary purposes, without any view to luxury or splendour. They never form towns, but live in scattered villages along the banks of rivers, or in plains that can be easily irrigated.