Necklaces are very much worn by Sakai girls and women. They are made of beads (which are considered the most elegant) serpents' teeth, animals' claws, shells, berries or seeds.
The men, instead, finish off their toilet by loading their wrists with bracelets. These are of brass-wire, bamboo or akar batù which it is believed preserves them from the fever.
Their faces are always disfigured by coloured stripes or hieroglyphics.
They have not the custom of wearing rings through their noses but only a little bamboo stick that is supposed to have the virtue of keeping off I don't exactly know what sort of malady or spirit.
The mother bores a hole through the nose cartilage of her child with a porcupine quill and then takes care that the wound heals quickly, without closing. Afterwards she passes through a light piece of this reed.
The same operation is made upon the ears, which from being generally well-shaped, become deformed, as the hole through the lobe has to be very large. It is not sufficient to pierce the tissue with a quill; a little bamboo cane has to be at once inserted; the day after a larger one is substituted and so on until it is possible to hang from the ears pendants made of bamboo and ornamented with flowers, leaves and perhaps even cigarettes.
A strip of upas bark twisted round the head bestows the finishing touch to the Sakais' toilet. Happy people! They have no tailor's, dressmaker's or milliner's bills to pay!
Footnotes:
[10] Gne would be pronounced in English as neay. Translator's Note.
[11] In [chapter XIV] speaking of the superstitions of this people I have mentioned those which refer to the birth of a child and the strange ideas they have concerning this event.