The Abbeville messenger. (Abbeville, S.C.) 1884-1887, 1886-07-06
BULLET-PROOF HATS.
Some Very Queer Eeadgear,
Ancient and Modern.
Queer Japanese Tiles of Vanished Paper
and Bamboo Helmets.

In India, the Malayan Archipelago, in
China, the Siam and Burmah hats are
made of straw, of rattan, of bamboo and
OF plth, of the leaf of the TALBOT palm
and a variety of broad-stcmmed grasses.
The straw hat is merely for shade; the
rattan and bamboo hats more often as
sumo helmet shape than that of a cylin-
der, and are often useful in deadcning
the blow of a club. But the p1th hat is
an Invaluable protection against sun
stroke.
The Japanese make hats, as they make
everything else, of paper, and these they
arc clever enough to coat with a rain
proof varnish. The people of ancient
Europe never went so far in invention in
this matter.
Hats were worn in Hellas by
by the Laconian pcasantry, as we learn
from the older historians, but they were
straw sunshadcs in Summer, and in Win
ter Tapping constructions of dogskin
quite unworthy of the name of hat. In
this respect, as in the use of tobacco,
America forcstallcd the old continent.
The Spanish conquerors found the ma
lives OF South America wearing a broad
orimmed hat, neatly plated of maize
stalks, and which was only worn during
the sultry weather of the hot season.. The
Romans wore no hats. Had they done
SO Cesar would scarcely have valued so
highly the privilege by which the Senate
entitled him to hide his badness with a
laurel crown On all occasions.
The Cloths and Gauls were hatless.
The Oelt, the Spaniard, and the Tcuton
were alike destitute of that great emblem
of civilization. The true hat of the East,
along with the secret of telling wool, was
brought back from Asia by the Crusaders,
snd from that time forth there begins to
arise in the foreground of European his
tory the majestic presence of the hat.
Ladies, who are seldom slow in dis
corning The merits of novelty in dress, at
least, appear to have adopted the hat be-
fore it formed a part of the wardrobe Of
their lords. During the splendid reign,
for instance, of Edward III. of England,
they wore alternately the hat and the
colt, or the hood, unmarried damsels
contenting themselves with the wimple.
At this time the noble still wore his
cap of maintenance; the knight, his NOR
tier; the esquire, his plumed bonnet and
the citizen, the fiat blue, red or black
cap of his guild or livery.
So early as the reign of Henry ", how,
ever. the Int began to steal into popular
ity in Spain, in England, in France, in
Italy, and especially in Germany and
Flanders, where it soon became part of
the ordinary equipment of a Lanzknecht,
who usually wore it steeple-crowned,
broad-brimmed and lined with plates of
iron.
These hats were pronounced positively
bullet-proof. By the time of the Wars
of the Roses NIL men, high and low, save
only the 'prentices of the city of London,
seem to have worn hats. Ladies wore
them also-hideous, steeple-crowned fab
RIGS, with brims of immeasurable breadth
and from which flowed a kerchief or
head-cloth-an ugly fashion, which lasted
to the end of the seventeenth century
among the rustic bellies and of which we
may sec examples in the vignettes of old
1zaak's "Complete Angler. "--Neaos- Letter.