Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/192

158 they understood that each had but one, they burst out into a laugh; and we had great trouble to persuade them, that the egui lai (kings) of Europe, had no more, which gave them no very high idea of their power.

Of all the articles with which we presented the ladies, odoriferous waters were most esteemed. They appeared to us as passionately fond of perfumes, as most of the inhabitants of warm climates: and yet their bodies were partly besmeared with cocoa-nut oil, which diffused a disagreeable odour.

One of the finest girls in this party having the little finger of the left hand wrapped round with a piece of stuff of the paper mulberry, which appeared bloody, we begged to see the wound. Another immediately took down from the roof, under which we sat, a piece of a plantain leaf, out of which she drew the first two joints of the little finger of the young girl, who had them very lately cut off, in order to cure her, as she told us, of a severe disease. She showed us the hatchet, made of a volcanic stone, which had been used for the operation; and informed us, that the edge had first been placed at the extremity of the third phalanx of the finger, and then the operator struck a smart blow on the head of this hatchet with the handle of another.