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From the ornamental balconies, and projecting windows framed in lattice-work, the women of the harems looked out upon us, with their faces partially covered, but yet taking care to exhibit a profusion of jewelry, having three or four large loops of gold in each ear, as well as nose-rings, outdoing in glitter their sisters of Penang.
Sheldon knelt beside him, the house-boys grouped around, their white singlets and loin-cloths peculiarly at variance with their dark skins and savage countenances, their huge ear-plugs and carved and glistening nose-rings. Sheldon tottered to his feet at last, and half-fell into the steamer-chair. Oppressive as the heat had been, it was now even more oppressive. It was difficult to breathe.
The first work of the whale-boat was to take the "return" boys and their trade-boxes ashore. Thus one danger was removed. While this was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages. And when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted clothing.
Some of the women are attired in quite fanciful colors; Turkish pantaloons of bright blue and jackets of equally bright red render them highly picturesque, and they wear a profusion of bead necklaces and the multifarious gewgaws of semi-civilization. The younger girls wear nose-rings of silver in the left nostril, with a cluster of tiny beads or stones decorating the side of the nose.
They spoke a few words of Maori, but wore their hair like the people of Santa Cruz, and resembled them in the character of their ornaments and in their general appearance. They had bows and clubs of the same kind, tapa stained with turmeric, armlets, ear-rings and nose-rings of bone and tortoiseshell.
There is also no lack of nose-rings, bracelets, sandals, etc.; but they do not wear nearly so many as the Hindoos. The men are all armed; even in the house they carry daggers or knives, and besides these, pistols in the streets. We remained two days in Buschir, where I was very well received by Lieutenant Hennelt, the resident.
And here and there, in the midst of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great groups of natives on the bare stone floor, young, slender brown women, old, gray wrinkled women, little soft brown babies, old men, young men, boys; all poor people, but all the females among them, both big and little, bejeweled with cheap and showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets, and armlets, these things constituting all their wealth, no doubt.
They had bright and happy faces, and as it was a Hindu festival most of them were decked out in all their finery with gold and silver bangles on their dainty arms and ankles, sometimes with jewelled nose-rings as well as ear-rings.
Safe himself in that "Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work; to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built!
From a very early age, the ears of Hebrew women were prepared for this load of trinketry; for, according to the Thalmud, II. 23, they kept open the little holes, after they were pierced, by threads or slips of wood: a fact which may show the importance they attached to this ornament. IV. Nose-rings, at an early period, became a universal ornament in Palestine.
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