Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/415

 Rh his car fare until called for by the conductor. Just as the dress or bodily ornaments characterize the tribe, so does the peculiar style of disfigurement serve as a tribal mark as well as a decoration. Some file the teeth in fantastic shapes; others bore and stud them with brass nails. Among some African tribes it is the custom to break off the lower jaw teeth. Sometimes they are filed to a point for the purpose of griping the arm of an adversary in wrestling or in single combat.

In tribal or family distinctions they do not stop here, for body-painting, tattooing, gashing the face and body were used for the purpose, while the savage can give the moderns many valuable points on dressing the hair. "The ancient Egyptian woman had blue hair, green eyelashes, painted teeth, and reddened cheeks, while the modern Egyptian follows similar fashions, prolonging the eyes by means of a drug, staining the nails brown, and painting blue stars on the chin and forehead." One does not have to go far in our own land to find a physiognomy as artificial in its makeup as that of the savage or Egyptian; while the painted face of the savage and the Indian is still kept before us in a more grotesque and ludicrous form in the curiously painted face of the circus clown.

Tattooing is a mode of ornamentation adopted by a great number of savage tribes, but with the development of dress, skin decorations cease, and as we get higher up in civilization but few remains of these savage customs are found. Our sailors, however, have shown a considerable degree of conservatism in preserving this custom.

Gashing is one of the most curious of all practices. "In South Africa, the Nyambanas," says Lubbock, "are characterized by a row of pimples or warts, about the size of a pea, and extending from the upper part of the forehead to the top of the the nose. . . . The tribal mark of the Bunns (Africa) consists of three slashes from the crown of the head down the face toward the mouth; the ridges of flesh stand out in bold relief. This painful operation is performed by cutting the skin and taking out a strip of flesh; palm oil and wood ashes are then rubbed into the wound, thus causing a thick ridge upon healing. . . .The Eskimos from Mackenzie River make two openings in their cheeks, one on each side, which they gradually enlarge, and in which they wear an ornament of straw resembling in form a large stud, and which may therefore be called a cheek stud."

I am told that now some young women occasionally submit to a rather painful surgical operation for the removal of a piece of