The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. VI. Being the Second of the Third VoyageCook, James
History
The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. VI. Being the Second of the Third Voyage
Cook, James
Cook, James, 1728-1779 -- Travel; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Voyages around the world -- History -- 18th century
The men commonly wear their hair cropt round the neck and forehead; but
the women allow it to grow long, and most of them tie a small lock of it
on the crown, or a few club it behind, after our manner. Both sexes have
the ears perforated with several holes about the outer and lower part of
the edge, in which they hang little bunches of beads, made of the same
tubulose shelly substance used for this purpose by those of Nootka. The
_septum_ of the nose is also perforated, through which they frequently
thrust the quill-feathers of small birds, or little bending ornaments
made of the above shelly substance, strung on a stiff string or cord
three or four inches long, which give them a truly grotesque appearance.
But the most uncommon and unsightly ornamental fashion adopted by some
of both sexes, is their having the under lip slit, or cut quite through,
in the direction of the mouth, a little below the swelling part. This
incision, which is made even in the sucking children, is often above two
inches long; and either by its natural retraction when the wound is
fresh, or by the repetition of some artificial management, assumes the
true shape of lips, and become so large as to admit the tongue through.
This happened to be the case, when the first person having this incision
was seen by one of the seamen, who called out that the man had two
mouths, and, indeed, it does not look unlike it. In this artificial
mouth they stick a flat narrow ornament, made chiefly out of a solid
shell or bone, cut into little narrow pieces like small teeth, almost
down to the base or thickest part, which has a small projecting bit at
each end that supports it when put into the divided lip, the cut part
then appearing outward. Others have the lower lip only perforated into
separate holes, and then the ornament consists of as many distinct
shelly studs, whose points are pushed through these holes, and their
heads appear within the lip, as another row of teeth immediately under
their own.
These are their native ornaments. But we found many beads of European
manufacture among them, chiefly of a pale blue colour, which they hang
in their ears, about their caps, or join to their lip-ornaments, which
have a small hole drilled in each point, to which they are fastened, and
others to them, till they hang sometimes as low as the point of the
chin. But, in this last case, they cannot remove them so easily; for as
to their own lip-ornaments, they can take them out with their tongue, or
suck within, at pleasure. They also wear bracelets of the shelly beads,
or others of a cylindrical shape, made of a substance like amber, with
such also as are used in their ears and noses. And so fond are they, in
general, of ornament, that they stick any thing in their perforated lip,
one man appearing with two of our iron nails projecting from it like
prongs, and another endeavouring to put a large brass button into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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