Their natural colour is not very dark; but they appear much more so than is natural to them, from the custom of smearing themselves daily over the face and body with ochre and a sort of black earth. Immediately after the birth, the head of the child is compressed, to give it what they consider a fine form, in which the eyebrows are drawn up, and the nostrils stretched asunder. In common with many other nations, they tear the beard out by the roots as soon as it appears. This is the business of the women. Their usual clothing consists of a little apron; but the rich wear blankets, purchased from the Russians, or from the American ships, and tied by two corners round the neck, so that they hang down and cover the back. Some of them wear bear-skins in a similar manner. The most opulent possess some European garments, which they wear on great occasions, and which would have an absurd effect were they not so disgusting as to extinguish all inclination to laugh. They never cover the head but in heavy rain, and then protect it by round caps of grass, so ingeniously and closely plaited as to exclude every drop of water. Whatever the degree of heat or cold, they never vary their costume; and I believe there is not a people in the world so hardened against the weather. In the winter, during a cold of 10 deg. of Reaumur, the Kalushes walk about naked, and jump into the water as the best method of warming themselves. At night they lie without any covering, under the open sky, near a great fire, so near indeed as to be sometimes covered by the hot ashes. The women whom I have seen were either dressed in linen shifts reaching to their feet, or in plaited mats. The custom common to both sexes, of painting their faces in broad, black, white, and red stripes crossed in all directions, gives them a peculiarly wild and savage appearance. Although this painting is quite arbitrary, and subject to no exact rules, the different races distinguish each other by it. To give the face a yet more insane cast, their long, hanging, tangled hair is mixed with the feathers of the white eagle. When powdered and painted in this way, the repulsiveness of the Kalush women, by nature excessively ugly, may be imagined; but they have a method of still farther disfiguring themselves. As soon as they are nearly marriageable, an incision is made in the under-lip, and a bone passed through it, which is exchanged from time to time for a thicker one, that the opening may be continually widened. At length a sort of double button, of an oval form, called a kaluga, which, among the people of rank, is often four inches long, and three broad, is forced in so as to make the under lip stand forward thus much in a horizontal direction, and leave the lower teeth quite bare. The outer rim of the lip surrounding the wooden button becomes by the violent stretching as thin as a packthread, and of a dark blue colour.