Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/744

724 had so ludicrous an appearance that, till we were used to it, we found it difficult to refrain from laughter."

Eight years later, on his visit to the northwest coast of America, Captain Cook found precisely the same custom prevailing among the natives of Prince William's Sound, whose mode of life was in most other respects quite dissimilar to that of the Australians, and who belong ethnologically to a totally different branch of the human race.

In 1681 Dampier thus describes a custom which he found existing among the natives of the Corn Islands, off the Mosquito coast, in Central America: "They have a Fashion to cut Holes in the Lips of the Boys when they are young, close to their Chin, which they keep open with little Pegs till they are fourteen or fifteen years old; then they wear Beards in them, made of Turtle or Tortoise-shell, in the Form you see in the Margin. The little Knotch at the upper end they put in through the Lip, where it remains between the Teeth and the Lip; the under Part hangs down over their Chin. This they commonly wear all day, and when they sleep they take it out. They have like-wise Holes bored in their Ears, both Men and Women, when young, and by continual stretching them with great Pegs, they grow to be as big as a mill'd Five-shilling Piece. Herein they wear Pieces of Wood, cut very round and smooth, so that their Ear seems to be all Wood, with a little Skin about it."

It is a remarkable thing that an almost exactly similar custom still prevails among a tribe of Indians inhabiting the southern part of Brazil—the Botocudos, so called from a Portuguese word meaning a plug or stopper. Among these people the lip-ornament consists of a conical piece of hard and polished wood, frequently weighs a quarter of a pound, and drags down, elongates, and evertsaverts [sic] the lower lip, so as to expose the gums and teeth, in a manner which to our taste is hideous, but with them is considered an essential adjunct to an attractive and correct appearance.

In the extreme north of America, the Esquimaux "pierce the lower lip under one to both corners of the mouth, and insert in each aperture a double-headed sleeve-button or dumbbell-shaped labret, of bone, ivory, shell, stone, glass, or wood. The incision when first made is about the size of a quill, but, as the aspirant for improved beauty grows older, the size of the orifice is enlarged until it reaches the width of half to three quarters of an inch." These operations appear to be practised only on the men, and are supposed to possess some significance other than that of mere ornament. The first piercing of the lip,