The dances and festivals of many savage peoples are notoriously accompanied by the most hideous licentiousness. Then the young men and women endeavour to please each other in various ways, painting themselves with brilliant colours, and decorating themselves with all sorts of ornaments.[1198] On such occasions many tribes who go naked in everyday life put on a scanty covering. Mr. Bonwick states that, among the Tasmanians, a fur string or band of emu feathers was used by some tribes, but only on great festivities; and the women wore in the dance a covering of leaves or feathers, which, as among the Australians on similar occasions, was removed directly afterwards. Tasmanian dances were performed “with the avowed intention of exciting the passions of the men, in whose presence one young woman had the dance to herself.”[1199] Among the Australian Pegulloburras, who generally go entirely naked, the women on festive occasions wear round the middle small fringes.[1200] Speaking of the Brazilian Uaupés, Mr. Wallace asserts that, “while dancing in their festivals, the women wear a small ‘tanga,’ or apron, made of beads, prettily arranged. It is only about six inches square, but is never worn at any other time, and immediately the dance is over, it is taken off.” Besides, their bodies are painted.[1201] The same was the case with the Tahitian Areois—a sort of privileged libertines, leading a most licentious life, and practising lewd dances and pantomimes,—who also sometimes, on public occasions, put on a girdle of the yellow “ti” leaves, which, in appearance, resembled the feather girdles of the Peruvians or other South American tribes.[1202] As to the South African Basutos, Mr. Casalis states that marriageable girls “frequently indulge in grotesque dances, and at those times wear, as a sort of petticoat, long bands composed of a series of rushes artistically strung together.”[1203] Very generally in the savage world, where climate does not put obstacles in the way, both sexes go naked till they reach manhood, covering being resorted to at the same period of life as other ornaments.[1204] A South Australian boy, for instance, when fourteen or sixteen years old, has to undergo the initiatory rites of manhood as follows:—he is smeared all over with red ochre and grease, the hair is plucked from his body, and all his friends gather green gum bushes, which they place under his armpits and over the _os pubis_, after which the boy is entitled to marry.[1205]