In his work on German Africa (II., 123) Zöller says that in Togoland

"the young girls did not hesitate in the least to remove
their only article of clothing, a narrow strip of cloth, rub
themselves with a native soap and then take a dip in the
lagoon, before the eyes of white men as well as black."

A page would be required merely to enumerate the tribes in Africa,
Australia, and South America which never wear any clothing.

Max Buchner (352-4) gives a graphic description (1878) of the nude
female surf swimmers in the Hawaiian Islands. Nor is this indifference
to nudity manifested only by these primitive races. In Japan, to the
present day, men and women bathe in the same room, separated merely by
a partition, two or three feet high.[8] Zöller relates of the Cholos
of Ecuador (_P. and A_., 364) that "men and women bathe together in
the rivers with a naïveté surpassing that of the South Sea Islanders."
A writer in the _Ausland_ (1870, p. 294) reports that in Paraguay he
saw the women washing their only dress, and while they waited for the
sun to dry it, they stood by naked calmly smoking their cigars.

But natural indifference to nudity is the least of the curiosities of
modesty. Sometimes nakedness is actually prescribed by law or by
strict etiquette. In Rohl all women who are not Arabic are forbidden
to wear clothing of any sort. The King of Mandingo allowed no women,
not even princesses, to approach him unless they were naked (Hellwald,
77-8). Dubois (I., 265) says that in some of the southern provinces of
India the women of certain castes must uncover their body from the
head to the girdle when speaking to a man: "It would be thought a want
of politeness and good breeding to speak to men with that part of the