" A!1 -' LABRETIFERY. 83 



of things until all the testimony in regard to both labrets and masks 

 has been submitted, it is now in order to indicate the observed traces 

 of labretifery along the eastern border of the Pacific. 



Beginning at the southward and eastward, the Botokudos, 1 appar- 

 ently alone in South America, still retain the practice which less wild 

 and more cultured tribes have discontinued. 



The inhabitants of Malhada have the neather lip bored and within the same they 

 carry a piece of thin cane about halfe a finger thick. (Purchas, Pilo-riin iv lib vii • 

 Bulwer, 1. c, pp. 178-179.) 



' ' The Brasilians have their lips bored wherein they wear stones so big and Ion.' that 

 they reach to their breast which makes them show filthy line" according to Purchas 

 "which another notes is not praeticed by the women. They bore holes in their boies 

 under lips wherein they stick sharp bone as white as ivory, which they take out and 

 put in as often as they will, and being older they take away the bones and instead 

 thereof wear great Jasper stones being a kind of bastard emeralds inwardly flat with 

 a thick end because they shall not fall out ; when they take out the stones they plav 

 with their tongue in the holes which is most ugly to behold for that they seem to 

 have two mouths one over the other." (Linschoten, lib. 2; Bulwer, 1. c.,.p. 180.) 



Maginus? saith that the Brasilians as a pleasant phantasie, wherein they take sin- 

 gular delight, have from their tender age long stones of no value inserted in their 

 lower lip onely, some in their whole face a cruel sight to behold. The selfsame fashion 

 is m request among the Margajates' of Brasll, yet not practiced bv the women 

 (Bulwer, pp. 180-181.) 



Of the Brazilians it is said by Purchas (1. c, III, p. 906) : 



" In their nether lips weare long stones for a gallantry, which being removed they 

 seem in a deformed manner to havj a double mouth * * * Vesputius weighed 

 the long stones, which they used to weare in their faces, about sixteen ounces 

 Lerius saith the men weare in their nether lip a Pyramidall stone, which braverie 

 weigheth down their lip, and subjecteth the face to great deformity. Some others 

 also not content with this, adde two others in their cheekes to like purpose." These 

 stones were "great at one end and little at the other; in their infancie it is a bone 

 .and after a greene stone, in some as long as ones finger; they will thrust out their 

 tongues at the hole when the stone is removed " (1. c, p. 908). 



Peter Carder, one of Drake's company, was captured by these people 

 on the north bank of the Bio de la Plata and afterward escaped. B> 

 reported that for each enemy "they kill, so many holes they make in 

 rlieir visage beginning at the nether lip and so proceeding to the cheeke, 

 eye browes and eares." He gives their name as " Tappanbassi." (1. c, p! 

 909.) Anthony Knivet, of Candishe's company, in 1591 cast on the Bra- 



■See Bigg- Withers, Pioneering in South Brazil, 1878, quoted by Flower, Fash- 

 ion in Deformity, New York, 1882, p. 6. 



- Compare Magixi, Geogr. Ptolem. Descr. dell. America, Part II, XXXIIII, p. 207 

 Ms, Venetia, 1597. This is the only reference to labrets I have come across 'in this 

 edition of Maginus, and it refers specifically to the Peruvians and not to the Brazil- 

 ians. There are many editions, and doubtless areference to the labret- wearing tribes 

 of Brazil may be found in some of them. For our purposes the quotations from Pur- 

 chas are quite sufficient. 



3 These are the Botokudos, or at any rate are described as living in the region 

 where the Botokudos now reside. 



