Dr King on the Physical Characters of the Esquimaux. 309^ 



corners of the mouth, in which are placed labrets, formed 

 with a double head like a stud, either made of ivory and blue 

 beads, of ivory alone, or of different kinds of stone, as steatite^ 

 porphyry, or greenstone.* The men of the Mackenziet, and 

 the women of Chamisso Island, J in addition, pierce the sep- 

 tum of the nose, through which they thrust the quill feathers 

 of birds, or pieces of bone, or tubulose shells strung on stiff 

 pieces of sinew. Both sexes at Prince William's Sound thus 

 pierce the septum of the nose, but prefer the lower lip to the 

 cheeks, and adopt two modes. The one consists in the under 

 lip being slit or cut quite through, in the direction of the 

 mouth, a little below the thick part. This incision, which is 

 made even in children at the breast, is often above two inches 

 long, and either by its natural retraction when the wound is 

 fresh, or by the repetition of some artificial management, as- 

 sumes the true shape of lips, and becomes so large as to ad- 

 mit of the passing of the tongue. This happened to be the 

 case when the first person having this incision was seen by 

 one of Captain Cook's party, who called out that the native 

 had two mouths, which the immortal traveller observes it very 

 much resembled. In this artificial mouth is placed a flat nar- 

 row ornament, made chiefly of a solid shell or bone, cut into 

 little narrow pieces like small teeth, almost down to the bone 

 or thickest part, which has a small projecting portion at each 

 end to support it in the divided lips, the cut part then appear- 

 ing outward. The other mode is merely to perforate the 

 lower lip in several places, when the ornaments consist of as 

 many distinct shelly studs, whose points are pushed through 

 the perforation ; the heads appear within the lip, as another 

 row of teeth immediately under their own. Attached to the 

 studs from below are suspended small strings of beads which 

 hang down to the point of the chin. These are not removed 

 so easily as the lip ornaments, which are at pleasure displaced 

 and replaced with the tongue. The Esquimaux of the Mac- 

 kenzie valued the labrets so highly, as to decline parting with 

 them ;§ while those of Prince William's and Kotzebue's 



• Cook, Kotzebue, Franklin, Beechy. f Franklin. 



X Beechy. § Franklin. 



