114 " HAIR-DRESSING— ORNAMENTS. Chap. V. 



skins, and iron. Many of the men are intelligent-looking, 

 with well-shaped heads, agreeable faces, and high foreheads. 

 We soon learned to forget colour, and we frequently saw 

 countenances resembling those of white people we had known 

 in England, which brought back the looks of forgotten 

 ones vividly before the mind. The men take a good deal 

 of pride in the arrangement of their hair ; the varieties of 

 style are endless. One trains his long locks till they take the 

 admired form of the buffalo's horns; others prefer to let 

 their hair hang in a thick coil down their backs, like that ani- 

 mal's tail ; while another wears it in twisted cords, which, stif- 

 fened by fillets of the inner bark of a tree wound spirally round 

 each curl, radiate from the head in all directions. Some have 

 it hanging all round the shoulders in large masses ; others 

 shave it off altogether. Many shave part of it into ornamental 

 figures, in which the fancy of the barber crops out conspicuously. 

 About as many dandies run to seed among the blacks, as 

 among the whites. The Manganja adorn their bodies 

 extravagantly, wearing rings on their fingers and thumbs, 

 besides throatlets, bracelets, and anklets of brass, copper, or 

 iron. But the most wonderful of ornaments, if such it may 

 be called, is the pelele, or upper-lip ring of the women. The 

 middle of the upper lip of the girls is pierced close to the 

 septum of the nose, and a small pin inserted to prevent the 

 puncture closing up. After it has healed, the pin is taken 

 out and a larger one is pressed into its place, and so on 

 successively for weeks, and months, and years. The process 

 of increasing the size of the lip goes on till its capacity 

 becomes so great that a ring of two inches diameter can 

 be introduced with ease. All the highland women wear the 

 pelele, and it is common on the Upper and Lower Shire. 

 The poorer classes make them of hollow, or of solid bamboo, 



