[Footnote 55: It is elsewhere said of these women, that, contrary to the custom of the sex in general, they affected dress rather less than the men. As to their modesty, let one fact related in the same place, be allowed its legal influence.--Their innermost veil, as our author will have it, was always bound fast round them, except when they went into the water to catch lobsters, and then great care was taken that they should not be seen by the other sex. "Some of us happening one day to land upon a small island in Tolaga Bay, we surprised several of them at this employment; and the chaste Diana, with her nymphs, could not have discovered more confusion and distress at the sight of Actæon, than these women expressed on our approach. Some of them hid themselves among the rocks, and the rest crouched down in the sea till they had made themselves a girdle and apron of such weeds as they could find, and when they came out, even with this veil, we could perceive that their modesty suffered much pain by our presence!" One fact of this kind speaks volumes. The reader may glance over them at his leisure.--E.] [Footnote 56: It is elsewhere remarked, that the bodies of both sexes are marked with the black stains called Amoco, like the tattowing of the Otaheitans, but that the women are not so lavish in the decoration as the men, and that whereas at Otaheite the breech is the choice spot for the display of their beautifying ingenuity, in New Zealand, on the contrary, it is almost entirely neglected as unworthy of embellishment. So much for the capricious partiality of dame Fashion.--E.]