Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/201

( 176 ) had a reed or bone ran through the septum of the nose, perhaps increasing in length according to rank, for the chiefs was by far the longest, and must have measured at least two feet. Ornamental scars on the shoulders were general, and the face of one was deeply pitted as if from the smallpox, though that disease is not self with the odours of the East, than the savage does in bedaubing his face with clays, or anointing his skid with the blubber of the whale. To carry, the proof yet farther, .we find that savages who ate unacquainted With the adventitious ornaments of dress, have recourse to various methods of altering the natural forms of the limbs or features, or to marking the body with scars, punctures, &c. which they deem highly ornamental. Among some tribes the head is flattened, among others it is rendered more convex, but the nose and ears are the chief objects of their personal vanity, and among all the savage tribes I have seen, they undergo some kind of distortion. As these operations ate performed in infancy, when the parts are flexible, and capable of taking any form, we are often led to conclude, that to be the natural configuration, which is only the effect of artificial distortion. known