Most have their faces painted with every variety of colour, in stripes, circles, and spots. Some are all scarlet, with black spectacles, or _vice versâ_; some, of a very gaudy turn of mind, half blue and half scarlet. Some are painted half plain and half spotted, or striped like clowns. In short, fancy has free scope in devising grotesque patterns of every sort. Many are entirely blackened down to the waist, or perhaps have one side of the face and one shoulder dyed dark-red; but the commonest and ugliest freak of all is to paint only the nose bright scarlet, and the rest of the face dead black, and very hideous is the result. The paint-box on these occasions is simple: red ochre supplies one shade, and the seeds of the vermilion-tree, so dull in the pod, but so brilliant when crushed, supply another. The nearest wood-fire yields black in abundance; while a dark-brown fungus is found on the bark of certain trees, and finds immense favour with many who cannot understand how infinitely more beautiful is the rich brown of their own silky skin, with its gloss of cocoa-nut oil. The gaudy blue is a recent addition to their stock—from English laundries; and an unusually vivid scarlet likewise tells occasionally of dealings with British traders.[23] On great festivals the family jewels are all displayed. They consist of necklaces of whales’ teeth rudely fastened together with sinnet, or else most carefully cut into long curved strips like miniature tusks, highly polished, and strung together in the form of a great collar, which is worn with the curved points turning outwards like a frill. The average length of each tooth is about six inches; but some necklaces, which are treasured as heirlooms, are nearly double this size, and all the teeth are beautifully regular. Their effect when worn by a chief in full dress is singularly picturesque, though scarcely so becoming as the large curved boar’s tooth, which sometimes forms an almost double circle, and is worn suspended from the neck, the white ivory gleaming against the rich brown skin.