The long fast, together with the daily effusion of blood, renders the young girls extremely pale. The chin is not dotted like the other parts, but pierced with one stroke of the thorn in straight lines, upon which musical characters might be written. All thorns seem to have a poisonous quality, and consequently, from being scratched with them, the eyes, cheeks, and lips are horridly swelled, and imbibe a deep black from the ashes placed on the wounded skin; so that a girl, upon leaving the house of that barbarous old woman, looks like a Stygian fury, and forces you involuntarily to exclaim, _Oh! quantum Niobe, Niobe distabat ab iliâ!_ The savage parents themselves are sometimes moved to pity at the sight of her, but never dream of abolishing this cruel custom; for they think their daughters are ornamented by being thus mangled, and at the same time instructed and prepared to bear the pains of parturition in future. Though I detested the hard-heartedness of the old women in thus torturing the girls, yet the skill they display in the operation always excited my wonder. For on both cheeks they form all sorts of figures with wondrous proportion, variety, and equality of the lines, with the aid of no other instrument than thorns of various sizes. Every Abiponian woman you see has a different pattern on her face. Those that are most painted and pricked you may know to be of high rank and noble birth, and if you meet a woman with but three or four black lines on her face, you may be quite certain she is either a captive, or of low birth. When Christian discipline was firmly established in the Abiponian colonies, this vile custom was by our efforts abolished, and the women now retain their natural appearance. CHAPTER V. OF THE PERFORATION OF THE LIPS AND EARS OF THE SAVAGES. The Abipones, like all the other American savages, used formerly to pierce their lower lip with a hot iron, or a sharp reed. Into the hole some insert a reed and others a small tube of bone, glass, gum, or yellow brass; an ornament allowed only to the men when they are seven years old, never to the women. This custom has long since been abolished amongst the later Abipones, but is still continued by the Guaranies who inhabit the woods, by the Mbayas, Guanas, and Payaguas. These people think themselves most elegantly adorned when they have a brass pipe a span long, and about the thickness of a goose's quill, hanging from the lip to the breast. But this imaginary ornament renders them very formidable to European strangers; for they are of great height, their bodies are painted with juices of various colours, and their hair stained of a blood red; the wing of a vulture is stuck in one of their ears, and strings of glass beads hung round their neck, arms, knees and legs; thus accoutred they walk the streets smoking tobacco out of a very long reed; figures in every respect terrible to behold.