The tattooing is done with a needle and thread, smeared with soot or gunpowder, giving a peculiar pitted appearance to the lines. It is rather a painful operation, producing considerable inflammation and swelling, which lasts several days. The practice of tattooing the women is almost universal among the Eskimo, from Greenland to Kadiak, including the Eskimo of Siberia, the only exception being the natives of Smith Sound, though the custom is falling into disuse among the Eskimo who have much intercourse with the whites.[N242] [Footnote N242: Bessels, Naturalist, vol. 18, p. 875 (Smith Sound); Egede, p. 132, and Crantz, vol. 1, p. 138, already given up by the Christian Greenlanders (Greenland); Holm. Geogr. Tids., vol. 8, p. 88, still practiced regularly in east Greenland; Parry, 1st Voyage, p. 282 (Baffin Land); 2d Voyage, p. 498 (Iglulik); Kumlien, Contrib., p. 26 (Cumberland Gulf, aged women chiefly); Boas, “Central Eskimo,” p. 561; Chappell, “Hudson Bay,” p. 60 (Hudson Strait); Back, Journey, etc., p. 289 (Great Fish River); Franklin, 1st Exped., vol. 2, p. 183 (Coppermine River); 2d Exped., p. 126 (Point Sabine); Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. xv (Mackenzie district); Dall, “Alaska,” pp. 140, 381 (Norton Sound, Diomede Islands, and Plover Bay); Petroff, Report, etc., p. 139 (Kadiak); Lisiansky, Voyage, p. 195 (Kadiak in 1805, “the fair sex were also fond of tattooing the chin, breasts, and back, but this again is much out of fashion”); Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, pp. 99, 100, 251, and 252, with figures (Siberia and St. Lawrence Island); Krause brothers, Geographische Blätter, vol. 5, pp. 4, 5 (East Cape to Plover Bay); Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 37, “Women were tattooed on the chin in diverging lines” (Plover Bay); Rosse, Cruise of the _Corwin_, p. 35, fig. on p. 36 (St. Lawrence Island). Frobisher’s account, being the earliest on record, is worth quoting: “* * * The women are marked on the face with blewe streekes downe the cheekes and round about the eies” (p. 621). * * * “Also, some of their women race their faces proportionally, as chinne, cheekes, and forehead, and the wristes of their hands, whereupon they lay a colour, which continueth dark azurine” (p. 627). Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc., 1589.] The simple pattern of straight, slightly diverging lines on the chin seems to prevail from the Mackenzie district to Kadiak, and similar chin lines appear always to form part of the more elaborate patterns, sometimes extending to the arms and other parts of the body, in fashion among the eastern Eskimo[N243] and those of Siberia, St. Lawrence Island, and the Diomedes. [Footnote N243: Holm (East Greenland) says: “et Paar korte Streger paa Hagen” (Geogr. Tids. vol. 8, p. 88).] [Illustration: FIG. 88.--Woman with ordinary tattooing.] Fig. 88, from a sketch made on the spot by the writer, shows the Point Barrow pattern.