354 VARIETIES OF FIGURE. 



and inflammation ; it then heals, and, when the crust 

 comes off after some days, the bluish or blackish-blue 

 figure appears." '^ When once the decorations are begun, 

 some addition is constantly made to them at intervals of 

 from three to six months ; and this is not unfrequently con- 

 tinued for thirty or forty years, before the whole tattooing 

 is completed. We saw some old men of the higher ranks, 

 who were punctured over and over to such a degree, that 

 the outlines of each separate figure were scarcely to be dis- 

 tinguished, and the body had an almost Negro-like appear- 

 ance. This is, according to the general idea, the height of 

 perfection in ornament, probably because the cost of it 

 has been very great, and it therefore shews a person of 

 superlative wealth *." 



The colour of the tattooed figures resides in the cutis or 

 true skin ; the cuticle is not affected. Contrary to what 

 we should have inferred, from the generally-assumed prin- 

 ciple of constant change in the component particles of ani- 

 mal bodies, these marks are indelible ; they are neither ex- 

 tinguished, nor rendered fainter by lapse of time, and can 

 be got rid of only by excision. 



Another mode of ornamenting the skin by means of 

 raised cicatrices is principally practised in Africa. Winter- 

 bottom informs us, that in the neighbourhood of Sierra 

 Leone it is peculiar to the female sex ; " that it is used 

 upon the back, breast, abdomen, and arms, forming a va- 

 riety of figures upon the skin, which appears as if embos- 

 sed. The figures intended to be represented are first drawn 

 upon the skin with a piece of stick dipped in wood-ashes, 

 after which the line is divided by a sharp-pointed knife. 

 The wound is then healed as quickly as possible, by wash- 

 ing it with an infusion of bullanta." " These incisions or 

 marks are generally made during childhood, and are very 

 common on the Gold Coast, where each nation has its pe- 

 culiar mode of ornamenting themselves, so that by the dis 

 position of the marks it is easy to know which country the 



* Langsdorff, p. IIS— 120. 



