Thlinkeet belle; for larger lip-blocks are introduced as years advance, and each enlargement adds to the lady's social status, if not to her facial charms. When the block is withdrawn, the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather, displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle. The privilege of wearing this ornament is not extended to female slaves."
In this method of adornment the native Americans are, however, rivaled, if not eclipsed, by the negroes of the heart of Africa.
"The Bongo women" (says Schweinfurth[1]) "delight in distinguishing themselves by an adornment which to our notion 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 each side. A very favorite ornament for the cartilage between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that are placed in the nose 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."
The slightest fold or projection of the skin furnishes an excuse for boring a hole, and inserting a plug or a ring. There are women in the country whose bodies are pierced in some way or other in little short of a hundred different places, and the men are often not far behind in the profusion with which this kind of adornment is carried out.
"The whole group of the Mittoo exhibits peculiarities by which it may be distinguished from its neighbors. The external adornment of the body, the costume, the ornaments, the mutilations which individuals undergo—in short, the general fashions—have all a distinctive character of their own. The most remarkable is the revolting, because unnatural, manner in which the women pierce and distort their lips; they seem to vie with each other in their mutilations, and their vanity
- ↑ "Heart of Africa," vol. i., p. 297.
