-bones stand out, their noses are
wide and flat, their mouths large, their lips thick, their eyes small,
black, and fiery, and their teeth strikingly white.

Their natural colour is not very dark; but they appear much more so than
is natural to them, from the custom of smearing themselves daily over
the face and body with ochre and a sort of black earth. Immediately
after the birth, the head of the child is compressed, to give it what
they consider a fine form, in which the eyebrows are drawn up, and the
nostrils stretched asunder. In common with many other nations, they tear
the beard out by the roots as soon as it appears. This is the business
of the women. Their usual clothing consists of a little apron; but the
rich wear blankets, purchased from the Russians, or from the American
ships, and tied by two corners round the neck, so that they hang down
and cover the back. Some of them wear bear-skins in a similar manner.
The most opulent possess some European garments, which they wear on
great occasions, and which would have an absurd effect were they not so
disgusting as to extinguish all inclination to laugh. They never cover
the head but in heavy rain, and then protect it by round caps of grass,
so ingeniously and closely plaited as to exclude every drop of water.

Whatever the degree of heat or cold, they never vary their costume; and
I believe there is not a people in the world so hardened against the
weather. In the winter, during a cold of 10 deg. of Reaumur, the Kalushes
walk about naked, and jump into the water as the best method of warming
themselves. At night they lie without any covering, under the open sky,
near a great fire, so near indeed as to be sometimes covered by the hot
ashes. The women whom I have seen were either dressed in linen shifts
reaching to their feet, or in plaited mats.

The custom common to both sexes, of painting their faces in broad,
black, white, and red stripes crossed in all directions, gives them a
peculiarly wild and savage appearance. Although this painting is quite
arbitrary, and subject to no exact rules, the different races
distinguish each other by it. To give the face a yet more insane cast,
their long, hanging, tangled hair is mixed with the feathers of the
white eagle. When powdered and painted in this way, the repulsiveness of
the Kalush women, by nature excessively ugly, may be imagined; but they
have a method of still farther disfiguring themselves. As soon as they
a