Page:Some Account of New Zealand.pdf/65

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I believe it is not customary to tattoo the children until they are eight or ten years of age; indeed at an earlier period the operation would be attended with considerable danger, from the inflammation that would be excited: even later in life the effects are sometimes so severe as to produce a great degree of fever, and some cases have occur red where death has been the consequence.

The operation of tattooing, which the natives call amocotāmoko [sic], is usually performed in the following manner.

The device being marked out with a piece of burnt stick, or red earth, the skin is punctured with the sharp point of a piece of bone, into which a vegetable fluid is inserted: as the pain is considerable, a portion only of the intended figure can be depicted at one time; as the inflammation abates they continue their work, but it is not without a great degree of suffering that they arrive at the honour of a complete tattooing: however, as honour is the reward, and this honour is bestowed chiefly upon those Rh