A further adjunct of their very simple costume is the armlet, which is knitted from grass fibre with a pointed cassowary bone. This primitive needle has a hole running up its entire length through which the grass fibre is threaded, and then the ornament is woven either in a diagonal pattern or in straight horizontal stripes, with strands of various colours. They often actually knit it round the arm or the wrist quite tightly, and when this is done the ornament is permanent, and is never removed until it is worn out. Sometimes they wear a bunch of flowers stuck into the armlet, and these not particularly fragrant, but the Papuans are persuaded that it is quite otherwise, and, pointing to their bouquet, they say with delightful naïveté, “Midina Namu”—“Good smell.” Alas! it is really the reverse, and the wearers of flowers in this manner are by no means pleasant neighbours. They also wear anklets of feathers and strings of beads, and in some of their dances I have seen them decorated with huge bunches of grass, which hang from between the shoulders and sweep the ground. Some also affect a light band at the knee, and light cane anklets which rattle as they dance. Indispensable to the men is the little bag which carries their few personal possessions: their betel-nut, their lime gourd and knife, the invariable adjunct of the delightful vice of chewing betel—as every traveller in the Malay Archipelago knows—and the “Paw-paw,” a fruit with which a little European tobacco is often eaten. The coast women carry a much larger bag of knitted fibre, which may be best described by saying that it resembles a hammock with the ends tied together; in this they carry potatoes and wood, and sometimes it is borne upon the head, the centre of it being brought over so that it is supported by the forehead, while the tapering ends hang down over the shoulders. At other times it is carried round the neck. The chief costume of the women of the coast tribes is the extraordinary petticoat made of grass or of a wide-bladed weed, each leaf of which would be about 3 inches wide. The blades composing this garment fall down perpendicularly from a waistband, to which layer after layer is attached, until the “Rami” has that fine spread which used to be attained by more civilised women by a contrivance which I believe was called a “dress-improver.” As we went inland and rose gradually higher and higher in the mountains, we observed that the “Rami” was growing shorter and shorter, until at length, just after we had passed Epa, it disappeared altogether; and one may reasonably consider the absence or presence of this garment as the great symbol of division between the coast natives and those of the highlands proper.