TATTOOING. 
193 
in the haze. I called on my way at many of the 
natives’ houses, and was always received with marked 
hospitality. In one place the inmates had recently 
had their hair dressed for some coming festival ; it 
had been washed in lime-water, so as to make it 
frizzed, and then dyed in various colours and 
arranged in different ways. Several days must 
have been spent in getting these extraordinary 
head-dresses into shape ; and for fear of again dis- 
arranging them they are content to sleep on a 
pillow made of a length of bamboo, on two short 
cross-legs, so constructed that no European could 
rest his head for five minutes without suffering 
O 
dreadful pain. 
It is all very well to talk about the ease of living 
in a state of nature, but the inconveniences to which 
savages put themselves in order to gratify their 
vanity are quite as great as, if not greater than, 
those forced upon us by the fashions and dictates of 
our society. Think of the agonies of tattooing. What 
would the natives give to escape them, if society 
would let them? But the stern laws of fashion, even 
here, allow of no exception. The practice seems to be 
confined to the women, the operation being performed 
by members of their own sex, and applied solely to 
the corners of the mouth, and to those parts of the 
body covered by the scanty clothing. The process 
is generally tedious and painful. The skin is punc- 
tured by an instrument made of bone, or by the 
15 
