Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/188

130 which is cut into sharp teeth, numbering from three to twenty, according to the purposes it is to be used for; the upper end is fastened to a handle. The teeth are dipped into the black liquor, and then driven by quick sharp blows, struck upon the handle with a stick used for that purpose, into the skin, so deeply that every stroke is followed by a small quantity of blood, or serum at least, and the part so marked remains sore for many days before it heals.

I saw this operation performed on the 5th of July on the buttocks of a girl about fourteen years of age; for some time she bore it with great resolution, but afterwards began to complain; and in a little time grew so outrageous that all the threats and force her friends could use could hardly oblige her to endure it. I had occasion to remain in an adjoining house an hour at least after this operation began, and yet went away before it was finished, in which time only one side was blacked, the other having been done some weeks before.

It is performed between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and so essential is it that I have never seen one single person of years of maturity without it. What can be a sufficient inducement to suffer so much pain is difficult to say; not one Indian (though I have asked hundreds) would ever give me the least reason for it. Possibly superstition may have something to do with it, nothing else in my opinion could be a sufficient cause for so apparently absurd a custom. As for the smaller marks upon the fingers, arms, etc., they may be intended only for beauty; our European ladies have found the convenience of patches, and something of that kind is more useful here where the best complexions are much inferior to theirs in England; and yet whiteness is esteemed the first essential in beauty.

They are certainly as cleanly a people as any under the sun; they all wash their whole bodies in running water as soon as they rise in the morning, at noon, and before they sleep at night. If they have not such water near their houses, as often happens, they will go a good way to it. As for their lice, had they the means only they would certainly