pipes
with a knob. Women wear great weights of metal as rings for
ornament.[390] The Galla women wear rings to the weight of four or six
pounds.[391] Tylor[392] says that an African belle wears big copper
rings which become hot in the sun, so that the lady has to have an
attendant, whose duty it is to cool them down by wetting them. The queen
of the Wavunias on the Congo wore a brass collar around her neck, which
weighed from sixteen to twenty pounds. She had to lie down once in a
while to rest.[393] The Herero wear iron which in the dry climate
retains luster. The women wear bracelets and leglets, and iron beads
from the size of a pea to that of a potato. They carry weights up to
thirty-five pounds and are forced to walk with a slow, dragging step
which is considered aristocratic. Iron is rare and worth more than
silver.[394] Livingstone says that in Balonda poorer people imitate the
step of those who carry big weights of ornament, although they are
wearing but a few ounces.[395] Some women of the Dinka carry fifty
pounds of iron. The rings on legs and arms clank like the fetters of
slaves. The men wear massive ivory rings on the upper arm. The rich
cover the whole arm. The men also wear leather bracelets and
necklaces.[396] In Behar, Hindostan, the women wear brass rings on their
legs. "One of these is heavy, nearly a foot broad, and serrated all
around the edges. It can only be put on the legs by a blacksmith, who
fits it on the legs of the women with his hammer, while they writhe upon
the ground in pain." Women of the milkman caste wear bangles of bell
metal, often up to the elbow. "The greater the number of bangles, the
more beautiful the wearer is considered."[397] The satirist could easily
show that all these details are shown now in our fashions.

+189. Ideals of beauty.+ In Melanesia a girdle ten centimeters wide is
worn, drawn as tight as possible. One cut from the body of a man
twenty-seven years old measured only sixty-five centimeters.[398] The
women of the Barito valley wear the _sarong_ around the thighs so tight
that it restricts the steps and produces a mincing gait which they think
beautiful.[399] The Rukuyenn of Guiana have an ideal of female beauty
which is marked by a large abdomen. They wind the abdomen with many
girdles to make it appear large. "The women of the Payaguas, in
Paraguay, from youth up, elongate the breasts, and they continue this
after they are mothers by means of bandages."[400] The