Not unfrequently the men deck themselves out in females’ ornaments. Many cover the rims of their ears with copper rings and crescents; others pierce the upper lip like the women, and insert either a round-headed copper nail or a copper plate, or, what is still more general, some rings or a bit of straw. The skin of the stomach above the waist is often pierced by the men, and the incision filled up with a bit of wood, or occasionally by a good-sized peg. On the wrist and upper part of the arm they wear iron rings of every pattern; some rings are cut out of elephant and buffalo hide, and look almost as though they were made of horn. The “dangabor,” an ornament composed of a series of iron rings, and worn on the lower portion of the arm, has been already described. The Bongo women delight in distinguishing themselves by an adornment which to our notions is nothing less than a hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married the operation commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood gradually increasing in size, until at length the entire feature is enlarged to five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in form, not less than an inch thick, and are exactly like the pegs of bone or wood worn by the women of Musgoo. By this means the lower lip is extended horizontally till it projects far beyond the upper, which is also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and then by a little ring, and sometimes by a bit of straw about as thick as a lucifer-match. Nor do they leave the nose intact: similar bits of straw are inserted into the edges of the nostrils, and I have seen as many as three of these on either side. A very favourite ornament for the cartilage between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that are placed in the noses of buffaloes and other beasts of burden for the purpose of rendering them more tractable. The greatest coquettes among the ladies wear a clasp or cramp at the corners of the mouth, as though they wanted to contract the orifice, and literally to put a curb upon its capabilities. These subsidiary ornaments are not however found at all universally among the women, and it is rare to see them all at once upon a single individual: the plug in the lower lip of the married women is alone a _sine quâ non_, serving as it does for an artificial distinction of race. According to the custom of the people, there need only be a trifling projection of the skin so as to form a flap or a fold, to be at once the excuse for boring a hole. The ears are perforated more than any part, both the outer and the inner auricle being profusely pierced; the tip of the ear alone is frequently made to carry half-a-dozen little iron rings. There are women in the country whose bodies are pierced in some way or other in little short of a hundred different places.