Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/513

Rh a little timid about looking too long into eyes—even very tender—when the blue star between them makes you squint."Loret, however, got bravely over both his hesitation and his timidity, and thinks the fashion not altogether bad.

This body-painting is the most individual of all the modifications we are to consider. Each person in it exercises his own personal caprice or fancy. It is greatly esteemed. To get material the Huron Indian went twenty miles. Painting serves several purposes: (a) Tylor says the Andaman Islander plasters himself with lard and colored clay as a protection against mosquitoes and heat, (b) In most of the cases cited, painting is simply for display, (c) It often serves as a sign of mourning, (d) In the "woad" of the Briton and the "war-paint" of the Indian.the purpose is to strike terror. Mougeolles suggests an origin for the practice that seems to us quite reasonable. Red is the commonest color used in body-painting; it was probably the earliest. The man who returned from battle covered with blood of hostile man or savage beast was a hero. Such a one might easily seek to constantly remind his neighbors of his success by replacing the real blood-stains by artificial ones as the original wore away. Humboldt says of the Orinocos that "no paint was a dishonor," but also that it was a chief's attribute, and that the chieftaincy was the reward of bravery. Herodotus says that "Thracian chiefs painted as a distinction. And, when in Rome, the victor ascended the Capitoline Hill painted with minium, there can be little doubt that he was simply using a very old symbol—of bloody victory.

Painting is temporary and needs frequent renewal. In many parts of the world we find color designs, elaborate, curious, sometimes beautiful, made permanent by tattooing. The pattern and the method vary greatly with locality. In some regions men only tattoo, in others only women, in others both sexes. Here it is confined to the nobles, there to the servile. In Abyssinia women chiefly tattoo. "The whole body is covered; even the gums are pricked blue. An old woman operator's tools were: a pot of blacking (charred herbs), a large iron pin, bits of hollow cane, and pieces of straw these last for pencils. She marks out the design, pricks dots with the pin loaded with the dye, and goes over it repeatedly. To allay the subsequent irritation it is plastered over with a green poultice; the scab must not be picked off" (Wood).

Very different, and only interesting because of its novelty, is the method of tattoo found among some Eskimos. The pattern is sketched and threads are passed under the skin. These threads are loaded with pigment, and are drawn back and forth until the pigment is taken into the skin, when the threads are removed.