A woman and a witch doctor of Central Africa, shewing the part that ornaments may play even when clothing is of the scantiest.
(From a photograph by Captain Ford.)
PLATE II.
Generally speaking, the more simple the race, the greater is its love of ornament. The cave-man’s sketch shows a woman who is devoid of clothing, but who wears bracelets, while it is said that in the original a necklace can be traced, though owing to an injury to the fragment of bone on which the drawing was made, the head of the figure has been lost.
On the West Coast of Africa, where clothes are not a necessity owing to the heat, bracelets are worn in such numbers by the native belles as to cover a large part of the forearm, while anklets rise in succession nearly to the knee. (See Plate [II].) Again, in New Guinea the women of some tribes who do not indulge in a single scrap of clothing, still wear ornaments on their heads and round their necks.
Figure 1.—Drawing of a woman engraved by a cave-man.