Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/290

232 quantity every year of his life, so that some of the elders were almost covered with it. Their faces are the most remarkable; on them, by some art unknown to me, they dig furrows a line deep at least, and as broad, the edges of which are often again indented, and absolutely black. This may be done to make them look frightful in war, indeed it has the effect of making them most enormously ugly; the old ones especially, whose faces are entirely covered with it. The young, again, often have a small patch on one cheek or over one eye, and those under a certain age (maybe twenty-five or twenty-six) have no more than their lips black. Yet ugly as this certainly looks, it is impossible to avoid admiring the extreme elegance and justness of the figures traced, which on the face are always different spirals, and upon the body generally different figures, resembling somewhat the foliages of old chasing upon gold or silver. All these are finished with a masterly taste and execution, for of a hundred which at first sight would be judged to be exactly the same, no two on close examination prove alike, nor do I remember ever to have seen any two alike. Their wild imagination scorns to copy, as appears in almost all their works. In different parts of the coast they varied very much in the quantity and parts of the body on which this amoca, as they call it, was placed; but they generally agreed in having the spirals upon the face. I have generally observed that the more populous a country the greater was the quantity of amoca used; possibly in populous countries the emulation of bearing pain with fortitude may be carried to greater lengths than where there are fewer people, and consequently fewer examples to encourage. The buttocks, which in the islands were the principal seat of this ornament, in general here escape untouched; in one place only we saw the contrary.

Besides this dyeing in grain, as it may be called, they are very fond of painting themselves with red ochre, which they do in two ways, either rubbing it dry upon their skins, as some few do, or daubing their faces with large