ALTERATIONS IN TATTOOING. 265 
mode of dressing, a proof that vanity may exist 
even among cannibals. The glass beads they 
obtained from us they immediately hung over 
their neck and ears, but had previously no 
ornaments on either. Most of them were quite 
naked; only a few had aprons made of the 
leaves of some kind of palm unknown to us, 
which from their various colours and red points 
. resemble feathers. Since the time of La Pé- 
rouse, the fashion in tattooing appears to have 
very much altered: he found the inhabitants of 
the South Sea Islands so tattooed over the whole 
body, as to have the appearance of being clothed; 
—now most of them are not tattooed at all; and 
those few who are, not with various drawings as 
formerly, but merely stained bluefrom the hip to 
the knee, as though they had on short breeches. 
In the canoes we saw a few women who 
were all very ae these disagreeable crea- 
tures gave us to understand that we should 
by no means find them cruel—a complaisance 
which did not render them the less disgust- 
ing. La Perouse here describes some attrac- 
tive females: these were as brown as the men, 
and as little dressed; their hair was cut short 
VOL. I. N 
