The act of tattooing, also, generally takes place at the age of puberty, in the case of men as well as in that of women. It is about that period that, in the underlip of all freeborn female Thlinkets, “a slit is made parallel with the mouth, and about half an inch below it;”[1052] that, among the Eskimo, pigments of various dye are pricked on the chin, at the angles of the mouth, and across the face over the cheek-bones;[1053] that, in some South American tribes, incisions are made from the shoulders of the girl to her waist, “when she is regarded as a delicious morsel for the arms of an ardent lover.”[1054] At the same age, either or both sexes are subject to tattooing among the Guarayos,[1055] Abipones,[1056] Baris,[1057] Gonds,[1058] Dyaks,[1059] Negritos of the Philippines,[1060] South Sea Islanders,[1061] Australians,[1062] &c. Among the Nagas of Upper Assam, it was the custom “to allow matrimony to those only who made themselves as hideous as possible by having their faces elaborately tattooed.”[1063] The Makalaka girls, before they could marry, had to submit to horrible torture, about four thousand stitches being made in the skin of the chest and stomach, and a black fluid being rubbed into the wounds.[1064] In New Zealand, according to the Rev. R. Taylor, it was the great ambition of the young to have fine tattooed faces, “both to render themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicuous in war.”[1065] In Samoa, until a young man was tattooed, he could not think of marriage, but as soon as this was done, he considered himself entitled to all the privileges of mature years.[1066] “When it is all over,” says Mr. Pritchard, “and the youths thoroughly healed, a grand dance is got up on the first available pretext to display the tattooing, when the admiration of the fair sex is unsparingly bestowed. And this is the great reward, long and anxiously looked forward to by the youths as they smart under the hands of the ‘matai.’”[1067] Often, however, the operation is accomplished not at once, but at different times, that the patients may be able to bear the inflammation and pain at every stage of the process; and not unfrequently it begins when the girls are quite young children, being constantly added to until they marry.[1068]