Of their Habits, and Way of Dressing.

THEIR clothes are, for the most part, made of rein deer and seal skin, as also of bird’s skin nicely dressed and prepared. The men’s habits are a coat or jacket, with a cap or hood sewed to it, to cover the head and shoulders, in the fashion of a domino, or monk’s hood. This coat reaches down to the knees. Their breeches are very small, not coming above their loins,{131} that they may not hinder them in getting into their small boats. And as they wear no linen, the hair of the skins the coat is made of is turned inward to keep them warm. Over this coat they put on a large frock, made of seal skin dressed and tanned, without hair, in order to keep the water out; and thus they are dressed when they go to sea.

Between the leathern frock and the under coat they wear a linen shirt, or, for want of linen, made of seal’s guts; which also helps to keep out the water from the under coat. Of late they appear sometimes in more gaudy dresses, as shirts made of striped linen, and coats and breeches of red and blue stuffs, or cloth, which they buy of ours, or the Dutch merchants, but fashioned after their own way; in these they make parade and feast, when they keep holidays on shore. The stockings they wore formerly were made of rein deer, or seal’s skin, but now they like better our sort of worsted stockings, of different colours, white, blue, and red, which they buy of us. Their{132} shoes and boots are made of seal’s skins, red or yellow, well dressed and tanned; they are nicely wrought, with folds behind and before, without heels, and fit well upon the foot[33].

The only difference between the dress of the men and the women is, that the women’s coats are higher on the shoulders and wider than the men’s, with higher and larger hoods. The married women, that have got children, wear much larger coats than the rest, most like gowns, because they must carry their children in them upon their backs, having got no other cradle or swadling clothes for them. They wear drawers, which reach to the middle of the thigh, and over them breeches: ............