As part of my class on Pacific Island Literature I am reading an excerpt of A Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allen Poe. It is Poe's only full length novel and, apparently it gets rather strange.

In the excerpt I am reading there is a point where two men make a rope out of their pocket handkerchiefs and use it to descend a cliff face. Poe describes at one point how one of the sailors tied the "rope" around his waste and then lowered himself several feet down the cliff! That is a hell of a POCKET handkerchief!

I have also learned, earlier and from a different source, that Chamorro women liked to get the handkerchiefs of sailors. The would tie them around their wastes to hide their nakedness.

So here is my question: How big was a pocket handkerchief in the first half of the 19th Century?