The children are then affianced,
and when arrived at a proper age they live together. The wife then has
her face tattooed with lamp-black and is regarded as a matron in
society. The method of tattooing is to pass a needle under the skin,
and as soon as it is withdrawn its course is followed by a thin piece
of pine stick dipped in oil and rubbed in the soot from the bottom of a
kettle. The forehead is decorated with a letter V in double lines, the
angle very acute, passing down between the eyes almost to the bridge of
the nose, and sloping gracefully to the right and left before reaching
the roots of the hair. Each cheek is adorned with an egg-shaped
pattern, commencing near the wing of the nose and sloping upward toward
the corner of the eye; these lines are also double. The most ornamented
part, however, is the chin, which receives a gridiron pattern; the
lines double from the edge of the lower lip, and reaching to the throat
toward the corners of the mouth, sloping outward to the angle of the
lower jaw. This is all that is required by custom, but some of the
belles do not stop here. Their hands, arms, legs, feet, and in fact
their whole bodies are covered with blue tracery that would throw
Captain Constantinus completely in the shade. Ionic columns, Corinthian
capitals, together with Gothic structures of every kind, are erected
wherever there is an opportunity to place them; but I never saw any
attempt at figure or animal drawing for personal decoration.
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