usually wear blue dungaree on week-days, and broadcloth or white duck on
Sundays. With the women and children it is different, for they depend on
parcels sent by friends, and as of late years there has been no regular
communication with the island they have been at times very short,
especially of underclothing. Now that whalers have begun to call again,
two or three appearing about Christmas time, they can sometimes get
material from them, but, except the dungaree, it is very poor stuff, and
they have to pay a high price in exchange. The women usually have a very
neat appearance, no hole is allowed to remain in a garment, which is at
once patched, and many and varied are the patches. They wear blouses which
they call jackets, and in the place of hats, coloured handkerchiefs
(occasionally procured from ships), which are worn all day, from morning
to night, and only taken off on very hot days, or when they are going to
be photographed, when as a rule no amount of persuasion will induce them
to keep them on. The little girls wear sun-bonnets, "capies" they call
them, and very well they look in them. The little boys wear short jackets
and long knickers. The women and girls card and spin their own wool, which
they knit into socks and stockings.

As regards food, potatoes take the place of bread. There are about twenty
acres under cultivation, each man having his own patches. They never
change the seed and rarely the ground. A man may enclose as many patches
as he likes provided he cultivates them. They used to manure their ground
with seaweed, but found its constant use made the ground hard; then they
tried guano, and finally sheep manure, which they use in large quantities.
They get it by driving their sheep during the lambing season four or five
times a week into the lamb-houses, penning them up from about five in the
afternoon until eight or nine next morning. The poor sheep must suffer
considerably both from being driven so much and because they get no food
while penned in. In spite of this barbarous practice the mutton when we