802 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mals, like those on the Buddhist monuments. Among the abo- 

 rigines of the Marquesas Islands the tattooing exhibits, on the 

 women, designs of every sort : boots, gloves, bows, suns, and lines 

 drawn with remarkable fineness and perfection; on the men, 

 animals sharks, crabs, lizards, snakes or plants, or geometrical 

 figures. Here tattooing constitutes real works of art. 



Sometimes tattooing and mutilation are combined, as in the 

 famous chiefs' heads of New Zealand, which are overloaded with 

 curved lines, with deep incisions showing as hollows, and with dark 

 colors, with the intervals colored with dotted tattooing that gives 

 the skin a bluish tinge. These curved lines spare no part of the 

 face, and are closer and more numerous, according to the fame of 

 the bearer of them as a warrior, or the antiquity of the origin of 

 his chiefly dignity. The tattooing of the New Zealanders has 

 found an unanticipated use in their relations with Europeans. 

 Thus, the missionaries having bought a tract of land, the facial 

 tattoo patterns of the vendor were drawn at the bottom of the 

 deed, to serve as his signature. 



The skins of all the grand chiefs of Guinea are in effect dam- 

 ascened. In New Zealand tattooing forms a sort of coat of arms. 

 The common people are not allowed to practice it ; and the chiefs 

 are not permitted to decorate themselves with certain marks till 

 they have accomplished some great enterprise. Toupes, an intel- 

 ligent New Zealander, who was brought to London a few years 

 ago, insisted upon a photographer taking pains to bring out his 

 tattoo marks well. "Europeans," he said, "write their names 

 with a pen ; Toupes writes his this way. No matter," he said 

 also to Dumont d'Urville, "if the Chonqui are more powerful 

 than I, they can not wear the lines on their foreheads, for my 

 family is more illustrious than theirs." The ancient Thracians 

 and the Picts distinguished their chiefs by their special tattooing. 

 The Pagas of Sumatra add a new color every time they have 

 killed an enemy. 



Tattooing is the true writing of savages, their first registry of 

 civil condition. Some tattoo marks indicate the obligation of the 

 debtor to serve his creditor for a certain time. The number and 

 nature of objects received are likewise indicated (Krausen, Ueber 

 die Tatouiren, 1873). 



Nothing is more natural than to see a usage so widespread 

 among savages and prehistoric peoples reappear in classes which, 

 as the deep-sea bottoms retain the same temperature, have pre- 

 served the customs and superstitions, even to the hymns, of the 

 primitive peoples, and who have, like them, violent passions, a 

 blunted sensibility, a puerile vanity, long-standing habits of inac- 

 tion, and very often nudity. There, indeed, among savages, are 

 he principal models of this curious custom. 



