A MARKET FOR OLD HATS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1523, 19 March 1886, Page 4

A MARKET FOR OLD HATS.

So" fhody rfccrtly returned from tlm Nicobar Islands says that oro of the peculiarities of the inhabitants is the pnssi'.n for old hat?. The savages r'on't. we r anything on t' eir pers ns except the conventional hH[> of cloth vi u've rr.nl about ; hut young and old, chief and subject, try to outvie each other in headgear and thf nurnber of old hats tl>v enn acquire jt. a lifetime. On a fino morning, ho nav s. he has seen the surface r>f the water in the vicinity of the islands dotted over with canoes, each having for its occupant a noble savage decked out in his narrow siip of cloth and a tall white hat with a black bard. The aforesaid noble barbarian is busy catching fi?■ h for his dinner. They won't have new hats, looking on them with suspicion. Traders from Calcutta mine excursions over there with carg es < f old hats, which they barter for cocoanuts. A good, tall, white hat with a black hard is worth about sixty cocoanut?. The people become almost as excited while the tradirgis going on as a lot of stockbrokers, and sometimes when a nuLiberof them are after the same bat, they lid agaiost each other until tbe price gets up into hundreds of nuts. When tbe trading is over the merchants generally set up tbe rum, and tbe whole population get drunk in (heir hats.—flu Hotter,