X ORNAMENTS FOR THE EARS AND LIPS 129 
ebony or wood two to three inches in diameter. Some 
of the women wear a metal pin or peg in the lower lip. 
This wooden plug is daily whitened with carefully 
washed kaolin. The girl’s lip is usually pierced by her 
maternal uncle; the mother is responsible for main¬ 
taining and enlarging the hole. The day is kept as a 
festival when the first solid plug is inserted, and a 
husband cuts a new pelele for his wife. When a girl 
with a labret chatters freely the eye can scarcely follow 
the motion of the disc, and when she laughs the comic 
effect is indescribable. Livingstone mentions the peleld 
as being worn by women on the Zambesi (1856). 
Sekwebu, his faithful guide, remarked, “ These women 
want to make their mouths like those of ducks.” Sub¬ 
sequently, in the Rovuma valley he saw men as well 
as women wearing the pelele, and noticed that in some 
cases its pressure on the upper gum and front teeth 
caused an alteration in their natural curve, for the 
teeth and the bone in which they were implanted 
curved inward instead of outward. 
Schweinfurth states that the labrets among the 
Mittoo women are made of ivory, ebony, or quartz. 
When drinking, the women raise the upper lip with 
the finger. In some of the Suk people, the lower lip 
is pierced and in the hole a bird or porcupine quill is 
inserted ; sometimes a piece of brass or a tooth. The 
natives in some parts of South America known as the 
Botocudos wear solid lip ornaments, and their name is 
derived from this habit, for the Portuguese word 
hotoque means a plug. 
The most extraordinary form of labret found in East 
Africa occurs among the women of the Murle tribe 
living near Lake Stefanie. A hole is bored through 
the lower lip, and this hole is gradually enlarged 
until a piece of ox-horn three to three and a half 
inches thick, and three inches long, can be inserted. 
The two openings in the piece of horn are plugged with 
wood. The mouth by this means is kept open and as 
K 
