Twenty minutes after we sat down at that hospitable board we rose from it, feeling like new men.
After all that we had gone through we needed two things, food and rest, and the food of itself was a great blessing to us.
Two girls of the same charming cast of face as the first whom we had seen waited on us while we ate, and very nicely they did it.

They were also dressed in the same fashion namely, in a white linen petticoat coming to the knee, and with the toga-like garment of brown cloth, leaving bare the right arm and breast.
I afterwards found out that this was the national dress, and regulated by an iron custom, though of course subject to variations.
Thus, if the petticoat was pure white, it signified that the wearer was unmarried; if white, with a straight purple stripe round the edge, that she was married and a first or legal wife; if with a black stripe, that she was a widow.

In the same way the toga, or 'kaf', as they call it, was of different shades of colour, from pure white to the deepest brown, according to the rank of the wearer, and embroidered at the end in various ways.

This also applies to the 'shirts' or tunics worn by the men, which varied in material and colour; but the kilts were always the same except as regards quality.

One thing, however, every man and woman in the country wore as the national insignia, and that was the thick band of gold round the right arm above the elbow, and the left leg beneath the knee.