40 cook's first voyage march, 



men are more marked, and the women less. The 

 women in general stain no part of their bodies but 

 the lips, though sometimes they are marked with 

 small black patches on other parts : the men, on the 

 contrary, seem to add something every year to the 

 ornaments of the last, so that some of them, who ap- 

 peared to be of an advanced age, were almost 

 covered from head to foot. Besides the Amoco, they 

 have marks impressed by a method unknown to us, 

 of a very extraordinary kind : they are furrows of 

 about a line deep, and a line broad, such as appear 

 upon the bark of a tree which has been cut through, 

 after a year's growth : the edges of these furrows are 

 afterwards indented by the same method, and being 

 perfectly black, they make a most frightful appear- 

 ance. The faces of the old men are almost covered 

 with these marks ; those who are very young, black 

 only their lips like the women ; when they are some- 

 what older, they have generally a black patch upon 

 one cheek, and over one eye, and so proceed gradu- 

 ally, that they may grow old and honourable toge- 

 ther : but though we could not but be disgusted 

 with the horrid deformity which these stains and fur- 

 rows produced in the " human face divine," we 

 could not but admire the dexterity and art with 

 which they were impressed. The marks upon the 

 face in general are spirals, which are drawn with 

 great nicety, and even elegance, those on one side 

 exactly corresponding with those on the other : the 

 marks on the body somewhat resemble the foliage in 

 old chased ornaments, and the convolutions of filla- 

 gree work ; but in these they have such a luxuriance 

 of fancy, that of an hundred, which at first sight ap- 

 peared to be exactly the same, no two were, upon a 

 close examination, found to be alike. We observed, 

 that the quantity and form of these marks were dif- 

 ferent in different parts of the coast, and that as the 

 principal seat of them at Otaheite was the breech, in 

 New Zealand it was sometimes the only part which 



