_Painting._--On great occasions, such as dances, etc., or when going whaling, the face is marked with a broad streak of black lead, put on with the finger, and usually running obliquely across the nose or one cheek.[N244] Children, when dressed up in new clothes, are also frequently marked in this way. This may be compared with the ancient custom among the people of Kadiak of painting their faces “before festivities or games and before any important undertaking, such as the crossing of a wide strait or arm of the sea, the sea-otter chase, etc.”[N245] [Footnote N244: Compare Kotzebue’s Voy., vol. 3, p. 296, where Chamisso describes the natives of St. Lawrence Bay, Siberia, as having large quantities of fine graphite, with which they painted their faces.] [Footnote N245: Petroff Report, etc., p. 139.] HEAD ORNAMENTS. _Method of wearing the hair._--The men and boys wear their hair combed down straight over the forehead and cut off square across in front, but hanging in rather long locks on the sides, so as to cover the ears. There is always a small circular tonsure on the crown of the head, and a strip is generally clipped down to the nape of the neck. (See Fig. 89, from a sketch from life by the writer.) The natives believe that this clipping of the back of the head prevents snow blindness in the spring. The people of the Mackenzie district have a different theory. “La large tonsure que portent nos Tchiglit a pour but, m’ont-ils dit, de permettre au soleil de rechauffer leur cerveau et de transmettre par ce moyen sa bienfaisante chaleur à leur cœur pour les faire vivre.”[N246] Some of the Nunatañmiun and one man from Kilauwĭtaiwĭñ that we saw wore their front hair long, parted in the middle, and confined by a narrow fillet of leather round the brow. The hair on the tonsure is not always kept clipped very close, but sometimes allowed to grow as much as an inch long, which probably led Hooper to believe that the tonsure was not common at Point Barrow.[N247] It is universal at the present day, as it was in Dr. Simpson’s time.[N248] The western Eskimo generally crop or shave the crown of the head, while those of the east allow their hair to grow pretty long, sometimes clipping it on the forehead. The practice of clipping the crown appears to be general in the Mackenzie district,[N249] and was occasionally observed at Iglulik by Capt. Parry (2d Voy., p. 493). The natives of St. Lawrence Island and the Siberian coast carry this custom to an extreme, clipping the whole crown, so as to leave only a fringe round the head.[N250] The women dress their hair in the fashion common to all the Eskimo except the Greenlanders and the people about the Mackenzie and Anderson Rivers, where the women bring the hair up from behind into a sort of high top-knot, with the addition in the latter district of large bows or pigtails on the sides.[N251] The hair is parted in the middle from the