As the face with us is chiefly admired for its beauty, so with savages it is the chief seat of mutilation. In all quarters of the world the septum, and more rarely the wings of the nose are pierced, with rings, sticks, feathers, and other ornaments inserted into the holes. The ears are everywhere pierced and similarly ornamented, and with the Botocudos and Lenguas of South America the hole is gradually so much enlarged that the lower edge touches the shoulder. In North and South America and in Africa either the upper or lower lip is pierced; and with the Botocudos the hole in the lower lip is so large that a disc of wood four inches in diameter is placed in it. Mantegazza gives a curious account of the shame felt by a South American native, and of the ridicule which he excited, when he sold his _tembeta_,—the large coloured piece of wood which is passed through the hole. In central Africa the women perforate the lower lip and wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the tongue, has “a wriggling motion indescribably ludicrous during conversation.” The wife of the chief of Latooka told Sir S. Baker[419] that his “wife would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the long pointed polished crystal in her under lip.” Further south with the Makalolo, the upper lip is perforated, and a large metal and bamboo ring, called a _pelelé_, is worn in the hole. “This caused the lip in one case to project two inches beyond the tip of the nose; and when the lady smiled the contraction of the muscles elevated it over the eyes. ‘Why do the women wear these things?’ the venerable chief, Chinsurdi, was asked. Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, ‘For beauty! They are the only beautiful things women have; men have beards, women have none. What kind of a person would she be without the pelelé? She would not be a woman at all with a mouth like a man, but no beard.’” [420]