PEOPLE WHO BATHE EVERY DAY.

North Otago Times, 8 January 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

PEOPLE WHO BATHE EVERY DAY.

Tho inhabitants of Hawaii, and, indeed, of the islands of tho Pacific generally, are the most amphibious people one can well imagine. Often they have several baths in one day, and everybody bathes at least once in the twenty-four hours, and has a good scrubbing into the bargain with tho best material that they have for the purpose. If possible, villages are built within convenient distance of a river, or a large pond, or lake is made by damming up a streamlet or two. In this place mixed bathing is employed by tho villagers, who i use for soap the large green oranges which grow about the pool. This fruit is too 'bitter for eating, but when tho pulp is rubbed on the skin of tho natives, which is always greased with cocoanut oil, it makes I a real soap and lathers nicely. Scrubbing brushes are also provided by Dame Nature, A segment is torn from the husk of tho cocoanut, and tho fibres thus exposed servo for the purposo of tho bristles of a manufactured brush. The bather makes good use of the soap and brushes thus provided, and when he has finished his ablutions ho sits in tho wind to dry, Bathing )b a curiously solemn ceremony, and during the process if drying no ono thinks of talking more than is necessary, while running about to expediate matters would bo considered a great'breach of decorum, When the skin is sufficiently dry a coating of cocoanut oil is rubbed in briskly. Then tho bather winds a strip of cloth, or gaudy print, round the waist in the approved native style, and the ceremony is at an end.