DISAPPOINTMENTS 
conical, and the forehead high but receding. The hair 
is sparse, beginning well up on the cranium, and 
falling in long strands to the middle of the back 
beyond the shoulder blades. The hair is plaited with 
erass and string, and from the plait at the back rises 
a single osprey feather. The eyebrows are straight 
and meeting, the eyes black, large, and heavy. ‘The 
nose is broad and flat, but with a prominent bridge, the 
mouth degraded and fatuous, but the lips neither so 
thick nor so protruding as the negro’s. The ears lie 
fairly flat to the head, and are not abnormally large. 
The men wear an enormous ear ornament of bamboo 
bent into an open ring. Round the periphery of this 
ring the flesh of the lobe of the ear, previously per- 
forated, is stretched in infancy, and as the individual 
grows the natural spring of the bamboo stretches the 
flesh more and more, until in manhood a loop is 
formed big enough to hold a ring of at least 4 inches 
in diameter. It is extraordinary how the tribesmen 
contrive to move amidst the tangled forest without 
hindrance from this abnormal expansion of the lobe, 
the most unusual flesh decoration to be found amongst 
mankind. When the bamboo is out the loop hangs 
like a long pendant, a perfect skein of flesh, a pecu- 
liarly hideous accessory of savage adornment. Some of 
the Tugeri wear an apology for a beard, or rather two 
scragey tufts of hair depending from each side of the 
chin. The use of pomatum in any form is unknown. 
The teeth are strong and fairly regular, but perfectly 
brown, owing to the habit of chewing the betel-nut. 
For personal adornment the Tugeri wear two 
crossed straps of dogs’ teeth strung together with 
49 
