t bandage or fillet round the head and
whiten it with pipe-clay as a soldier cleans his belts.* They also wear
one of a red colour under it. The custom is so general, without obvious
utility, at least when the hair is short, that we may suppose it is also
connected with some superstition.

(*Footnote. See illustration Cambo Volume 1.)

STRIKING OUT THE TOOTH.

But still more remarkable is the practice of striking out one of the
front teeth at the age of puberty, a custom observed both on the coast
and as far as I penetrated in the interior. On the western coast also
Dampier observed that the two fore-teeth were wanting in all the men and
women he saw. According to Piper certain rites belong to this strange
custom. The young men retire from the tribe to solitary places, there to
mourn and abstain from animal food for many days previous to their being
subjected to this mutilation. The tooth is not drawn but knocked out by
an old man, or coradje, with a wooden chisel, struck forcibly and so as
to break it. It would be very difficult to account for a custom so
general and also so absurd, otherwise than by supposing it a typical
sacrifice, probably derived from early sacrificial rites. The cutting off
of the last joint of the little finger of females seems a custom of the
same kind; also boring the cartilage between the nostrils in both sexes
and wearing therein, when danger is apprehended, a small bone or piece of
reed.*

(*Footnote. The aborigines of Australia seem to resemble more, although
at so great a distance, those of the Sandwich Islands than the natives of
any other of the numerous isles so much nearer to them. According to Cook
this strange custom of striking out the teeth prevails also there. "The
knocking out their fore teeth," says that navigator, "may be, with
propriety, classed among their religious customs. Most of the common
people and many of the chiefs had lost one or more of them; and this we
understood was considered as a propitiatory sacrifice to the Eatooa to
avert his anger; and not like the cutting off a part of the finger at the
Friendly Islands to express the violence of their grief at the death of a
friend." Cook's Voyage.)

PAINTING WITH RED.

To paint the body red seems also a custom of the natives in all parts
that I have visited: but the most constant use of colours both white and
red appears on the narrow shield or hieleman (see below) which is seldom
to be found without some vestiges