13G TATTOOING. 



the skin with such instruments as a piece of a sliell, the flinty edge 

 of the bamboo, the tooth of a large fruit-eating bat (Pieropidae), or 

 even by the long finger-nails. The older lads have to submit them- 

 selves to this operation before they obtain the rights of manhood j 

 and I was informed that during its progress they are kept isolated 

 in a house and fed on the blood of a certain fish (?) After it is 

 completed, they are at liberty to marry, and they are allowed to 

 take part in the fighting and in the fishing expeditions. 



Tattooing is not generally practised amongst tlie people of the 

 islands of Bougainville Straits. I only observed it in a few 

 instances, more particularly amongst the women, when it resembles 

 that which has been above described. A party of men from the 

 villao-e of Takura on the coast of Bougainville, whom I met on one 

 occasion, had their faces marked with shallow linear grooves of much 

 the same colour as the skin, which commenced at the "alee nostri.' 

 and, curving over the cheek-bones, terminated above the eyebrows. 

 These lines were more distinct than those which mark the faces of 

 the natives in the eastward islands, although they were probably 

 ])roduced in a similar manner. Another pattern of tattooing, which 

 may be desci'ibed as a branching coil, is to be found in the repre- 

 sentation of the head of a native of Isabel Island, which was obtained 

 from a mould taken in D'Urville's expedition in 1838.^ Some men 

 of the districts' of the Uta Pass and Urasi on the north coast of 

 Malaita, whom I met on one occasion, had their faces marked with 

 a double or a single row of blueish dots commencing on the cheek- 

 bones and meeting on the forehead. 



In the place of tattooing, the inhabitants of the islands of Bou- 

 gainville Straits ornament their bodies with rows of circular and 

 somewhat raised cicatrices which are usually about the size of a 

 fourpenny piece and about a third of an inch apart. In the case of 

 the men, the shoulders, upper arms, and chest are thus marked : a 

 double row of cicatrices commences on the shoulder-blade of either 

 side, and crossing the upper arms near the apex of the insertion of 

 the deltoid muscle these rows arch over the armpits and meet at the 

 lower part of the sternum. The chiefs and their sons often have an 

 additional row of these mafks. Although this is the common 

 fashion, one sometimes meets men who have the cicatrices confined to 

 the chest or to the shoulders, or to only one side of the body. 

 Amongst the women, the shoulders, upper arms, and bi-easts are 



1 Plate vi. : Athis Anthropologie ; " Voya<;e au I'ole Sud et flans I'Oceanie." 



