produce no visible advantage, and are not made without great pain; but
though we enquired of many hundreds, we could never get any account of
the matter.[6]

[Footnote 6: It is very remarkable that something like this tattowing
was practised among the Thracians of old, and was actually considered as
an indication of nobility. So says Herodotus in Terps. 6. The notion is
no way irrational, that early and semi-civilized people had no other way
of distinguishing ranks, than by making visible differences on the skin.
The original inhabitants of Britain, it is probable, meant the same
thing by their use of colouring substances. Though it is probable enough
too, that another purpose was also accomplished thereby, viz.
preservation in some degree from the inclemency of the climate. By some
authors, it has been imagined, that such painting rendered them more
terrible to their enemies, which was the reason for the practice. The
Indians of North Carolina, according to the curious account of them by
Surveyor-General Lawson, Lond. 1714, had still another reason for
something similar. Speaking of their use of varnish, pipe-clay,
lamp-black, &c. &c. for colouring their bodies before going out to war,
he says, "when these creatures are thus painted, they make the most
frightful figures that can be imitated by man, and seem more like devils
than human creatures. You may be sure that they are about some mischief
when you see them thus painted; for in all the hostilities which have
ever been acted against the English at any time, in several of the
plantations of America, the savages always appeared in this disguise,
whereby they might never after be discovered, or known by any of the
Christians that should happen to see them after they had made their
escape; for it is impossible even to know an Indian under these colours,
although he has been at your house a thousand times, and you know him at
other times as well as you do any person living."--Mr Bryan Edwards
mentions something of the Charaibes like this. "Not satisfied with the
workmanship of nature, they called in the assistance of art, to make
themselves more formidable. They painted their faces and bodies with
arnotto so extravagantly, that their natural complexion, which was
really that of a Spanish olive, was not easily to be distinguished under
the surface of crimson. However, as this mode of painting themselves was
practised by both sexes, perhaps it was at first introduced as a