Mr. Griffith, in his paper on Sierra Leone, in Jour. Anthrop. Inst. of Gr. Br. and I. (b), says:
The girls are cut on their backs and loins in such a manner as to leave raised scars, which project above the surface of the skin about one-eighth of an inch. They then receive Boondoo names, and after recovery from the painful operation are released from Boondoo with great ceremony and gesticulation by some who personate Boondoo devils. They are then publicly pronounced marriageable.
Dr. Holub (b), speaking of three cuts on the breast of a Koranna of Central South Africa, says:
They have among themselves a kind of freemasonry. Some of them have on their chest three cuts. When they were asked what was the reason of it they generally refused to answer, but after gaining their confidence they confessed that they belonged to something like a secret society, and they said, “I can go through all the valleys inhabited by Korannas and Griquas, and wherever I go when I open my coat and show these three cuts I am sure to be well received.”
Mr. H. H. Johnston (a) tells us that scarification is practiced right along the course of the Congo up to the Stanley falls. The marks thus made are tribal. Thus the Bateke are always distinguished by five or six striated lines across the cheek bones, while the Bayansi scar their foreheads with a horizontal or vertical band.
E. Brussaux, in L’Anthropologie (c), reports that scarifications in Congo, which are chiefly on the back, are made for therapeutic reasons.
Julian Thomas (a) gives the following description of a New Hebrides woman:
She had a pattern traced over her throat and breast like a scarf. It was done with a shark’s tooth when a child. The women’s skins are blistered up into flowers and ferns. The skin is cut and earth and ashes placed inside the gashes, and the flesh grows into these forms. Of course they do not cover up these beauties by clothing.
According to Mr. Man, Journ. Anthrop. Inst. of Gr. Br. and I. (c), the Andamanese, who also tattoo by means of gashing, do so first by way of ornament, and, secondly, to prove the courage of the individual operated upon and his or her power of enduring pain.