Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/747

Rh in this respect, I believe, surpasses anything that may be found throughout Africa. Not satisfied with piercing the lower lip, they drag out the upper lip as well for the sake of symmetry. . . . Circular plates, nearly as large as a crown-piece, made variously of quartz, of ivory, or of horn, are inserted into the lips that have been stretched by the growth of years, and then often bent in a position that is all but horizontal; and when the women want to drink, they have to elevate the upper lip with their fingers, and to pour the draught into their mouth.

"Similar in shape is the decoration which is worn by the women of Maganya; but, though it is round, it is a ring and not a flat plate; it is called pelele, and has no object but to expand the upper lip. Some of the Mittoo women, especially the Loobah, not content with



the circle or the ring, force a cone of polished quartz through the lips as though they had borrowed the idea from the rhinoceros. This fashion of using quartz belemnites of more than two inches long is in some instances adopted by the men."

The traveler who has been the eye-witness of such customs may well add: "Even among these uncultured children of nature, human pride crops up among the fetters of fashion, which, indeed, are fetters in the worst sense of the word; for fashion in the distant wilds of Africa tortures and harasses poor humanity as much as in the great prison of civilization."

It seems, indeed, a strange phenomenon that in such different races, so far removed in locality, customs so singular—to our ideas so revolting and unnatural, and certainly so painful and inconvenient—should