CLOTHING AND ORNAMENT. 49 



diate vicinity of Humboldt Bay, tattooing is so very rare. Erdweg [1902] makes no mention of it concer- 

 ning the hère situated island of Tumleo and Parkinsox [1900, 24] only mentions that the women are 

 tattooed, exclusively on the face and breast. Further to the east tattooing disappears altogether. Wyatt 

 Gill [1885, 2S7] wrote of British New Guinea that each tattooing mark of the men indicated a life 

 violently taken: the black people of the west do not practise tattooing (Macgregor [1S97, 51]). 



The manner in which tattooing is applied, and the instrument used for the purpose 

 also differ locally. De CLERCQ and SCHMELTZ [1893, 31] report of Netherl. N. G. that the 

 figures are first pricked and afterwards rubbed with charcoal. In Humboldt Bay and surroun- 

 dings soot is used, obtained by partial burning of a dammarlike kind of rosin (see N°. 224 

 and 225), which is collected from the trunk, or from the soil at the foot of trees. With 

 this soot the skin is sprinkled and then a moderately long pièce of wood, as a handle, to the 

 end of which a sago thorn is transversely fastened, is taken in the left hand. By knocking 

 lightly with the fingers of the right hand on the handle, this is brought into a springy motion, 

 by which the thorn each time enters the skin, and from the red figure which gradually shows 

 through the black layer the design obtained can be judged. 



Xext to the tattooing, the cicatrices of the skin form a kind of ornament, which 

 appeared to exist in ail the différent parts visited by the expédition. What the meaning is 

 of the custom and what ail the figures created represent, I hâve not been able to discover. 

 One of the objects is certainly ornament and in fact a naked Papuan in his naturally plain 

 skin makes on the European, who, by a stay of some duration, lias become accustomed to 

 skin ornament, a less cared for impression than another whose skin is provided with well 

 executed scars. Such raised figures, burnt in on the backs of women, standing out over 

 the surface of the skin to the thickness of a pipe stem, are already reported from H. B. by 

 VAN DER GOES [1858, 172], and FlNSCH [1888, 362] noted that not only the men, but also 

 the women were decorated in this manner. Now-a-days they are seldom seen hère on the men 

 (PL XLV, fig. 3) but very often amongst the women and the frequency of a snake or reversed 

 coil figure, not unlike the leeches noticed amongst the tattooing, but provided at one of the ends 

 with a loop (PL XL VII and XLVIII), is particularly striking. Figures of this size, so regularly 

 smooth of surface and raised so much (3 — 6 m. m.) above the level of the skin, I hâve not met with 

 anywhere else amongst women. This scar pattern is however ofwide distribution ; thus in British 

 X. G. as „tabu", with women on the arms and also on both sides below the loins (REPORTS [1904, 

 168 and PL IX, fig. 2]) whilst FlNSCH [1888, 334, fig. d) illustrâtes of K. W. Land as an 

 ornament with men, snakes, which hâve the same shape of head as those of the H. B. women. 

 Such raised snakes, but without a head I found on several men of the district Sëkâ on the 

 skin of the backs and also with a young man of Angâdi. The latter had his left shoulder 

 decorated with it (according to THOMSON [1892, 126], in British N. G., the spot where the tribal 

 crest is applied by préférence), but the connective tissue had accidentally been torn right across 

 and naturally healed only very slowly. As such big raised scars do not appear to occur in 

 Geelvink Bay itself, an analogy of customs again appears hère with the south west coast 

 (with which Angâdi has also the language in common) and from where RobidÉ VAN DER Aa 

 [1879, 164] reports burnt-in crosses and other figures on the chest and upper arm of the men, 

 adding that thèse serve to please the fair sex. Lineal raised scars occurred over the 

 whole length of the thighs, along the latéral side with men of Kaptiau, as shown on fig. 191 

 Nova Guinea. III. Ethnographv. 7 



