72 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Thlinkeet belle ; for larger lip-blocks are introduced as years advance, 

 and each enlargement adds to the lady's social status, if not to her 

 facial charms. AVhen the block is withdrawn, the lip drops down 

 upon the chin like a piece of leather, displaying the teeth, and present- 

 ing altogether a ghastly spectacle. The privilege of wearing this or- 

 nament is not extended to female slaves." 



In this method of adornment the native Americans are, however, 

 rivaled, if not eclipsed, by the negroes of the heart of Africa. 



"The Bongo women" (says Schweinfurth*) "delight in distinguish- 

 ing themselves by an adornment which to our notion is nothing less 

 than a hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married, the opera- 

 tion commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly 

 bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood, gradu- 

 ally increasing in size, until at length the entire feature is enlarged to 

 five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in 

 form, not less than an inch thick, and are exactly like the pegs of bone 

 or wood worn by the women of Musgoo. By this means the lower lip 

 is extended horizontally till it projects far beyond the ujjper, which is 

 also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and then by 

 a little ring, and sometimes by a bit of straw, about as thick as a luci- 

 fer-match. Nor do they leave the nose intact ; similar bits of straw 

 are inserted into the edges of the nostrils, and I have seen as many as 

 three of these on each side. A very favorite ornament for the carti- 

 lage between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that are placed 

 in the nose of buffaloes and other beasts of burden for the purpose of 

 rendering them more tractable. The greatest coquettes among the 

 ladies wear a clasp, or cramp, at the corners of the mouth, as though 

 they wanted to contract the orifice, and literally to put a curb upon 

 its capabilities. These subsidiary ornaments are not, however, found 

 at all universally among the women, and it is rare to see them all at 

 once upon a single individual ; the plug in the lower lip of the married 

 women is alone a sine qud non, serving as it does for an artificial dis- 

 tinction of race." 



The slightest fold or projection of the skin furnishes an excuse for 

 boring a hole, and inserting a plug or a ring. There are women in the 

 country whose bodies are pierced in some way or other in little short 

 of a hundred different places, and the men are often not far behind in 

 the profusion with which this kind of adornment is carried out. 



" The whole group of the Mittoo exhibits peculiarities by which it 

 may be distinguished from its neighbors. The external adornment of 

 the body, the costume, the ornaments, the mutilations which individ- 

 uals undergo in short, the general fashions have all a distinctive 

 character of their own. The most remarkable is the revolting, because 

 unnatural, manner in which the women pierce and distort their lips ; 

 they seem to vie with each other in their mutilations, and their vanity 



* " Heart of Africa," vol. i., p. 297. 



