FEATURES OF THE PAPUANS iii 



to look you straight in the eyes, and when you rarely 

 make them do so you seem to be looking into an un- 

 lighted and empt}^ space. 



The teeth are strong, but not conspicuously white 

 and perfect like those of some other black races. A 

 good many men file or chip the upper incisors to a 

 point, but this has not, so far as we know, any particular 

 significance. 



The nose is almost bridgeless and is of a somewhat 

 hooked and fleshy type with wide nostrils. The septum 

 of the nose is pierced when the boys are young, and the 

 hole is kept open by a rolled-up leaf thrust through it ; 

 in this way it is gradually dilated until the man is able 

 to wear a carved ornament of a piece of the bill of a 

 hornbill or a curved boar's tusk, with which he decorates 

 himself on festal occasions. The nose-piercing is 

 attended with a good deal of ceremony, but w^e were 

 never fortunate enough to see it ; it is done when the 

 child is about five years old, and the operation is made 

 (according to native accounts) with a piece of sharpened 

 bone heated in the fire. Small ornaments are some- 

 times worn in holes in the alae nasi which are pierced 

 in all the children, both boys and girls, when they are 

 small infants. 



Many of the people pierce the lobes of the ear, but 

 the custom is not universal. The ornaments worn in 

 the ear are strings of two or three beads, or small rings 

 of plaited fibres or rattan, or the claw of a cassowary. 

 We took with us a large number of Jew's harps as 

 trade goods, but the natives did not care for them, 

 and two (the only two, I believe) that we did succeed 



