These people bore their testimony that the love of finery is an universal passion, for their ornaments were very numerous. Some of the better sort wore chains of gold round their necks, but they were made of plaited wire, and consequently were light and of little value; others had rings, which were so much worn, that they seemed to have descended through many generations; and one person had a silver-headed cane, marked with a kind of cypher, consisting of the Roman letters V, O, C, and therefore probably a present from the Dutch East India Company, whose mark it is: they have also ornaments made of beads, which some wear round their necks as a solitaire, and others, as bracelets, upon their wrists: these are common to both sexes, but the women have besides strings or girdles of beads, which they wear round their waists, and which serve to keep up their petticoat. Both sexes had their ears bored, nor was there a single exception that fell under our notice, yet we never saw an ornament in any of them; we never indeed saw either man or woman in any thing but what appeared to be their ordinary dress, except the king and his minister, who in general wore a kind of night-gown of coarse chintz, and one of whom once received us in a black robe, which appeared to be made of what is called prince’s stuff. We saw some boys, about twelve or fourteen years old, who had spiral circles of thick brass wire passed three or four times round their arms, above the elbow, and some men wore rings of ivory, two inches in breadth, and above an inch in thickness, upon the same part of the arm: these, we were told, were the sons of the rajas, or chiefs, who wore those cumbrous ornaments as badges of their high birth. Almost all the men had their names traced upon their arms in indelible characters of a black colour, and the women had a square ornament of flourished lines, impressed in the same manner, just under the bend of the elbow. We were struck with the similitude between these marks, and those made by tattowing in the South Sea islands, and upon inquiring into its origin, we learnt that it had been practised by the natives long before any Europeans came among them; and that in the neighbouring islands, the inhabitants were marked with circles upon their necks and breasts. The universality of this practice, which prevails among savages in all parts of the world, from the remotest limits of North America, to the islands in the South Seas, and which probably differs but little from the method of staining the body that was in use among the antient inhabitants of Britain, is a curious subject of speculation.[1]