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Fully one half of Malië's followers were men of such stature that the undersized though wiry Chilenos looked like dwarfs beside them; then, in addition to this, their immense "mops" of bright golden hair dyed that colour by the application of lime and their wonderfully tatooed bodies, with the first intricate lines beginning at the waist and ending at the knees, accentuated the velvety and rich reddish brown of their skins.
The chief, for such he evidently was, wore no clothing, except a piece of native cloth round his loins; but his whole body was elaborately tatooed with various devices; and this species of decoration, coupled with the darkness of his skin, did away very much with the appearance of nakedness. He seemed as if he had been clothed in a dark skin-tight dress.
The pederast often has feminine elegance, long and curly hair, and even in prison garb, a certain feminine figure, delicate skin, childish look, and abundance of glossy hair parted in the middle. Burglars who break into houses have as a rule woolly hair, deformed cranium, powerful jaws, and enormous zygomatic arches, are covered with scars on the head and trunk, and are often tatooed.
It may be worth while to add here the account which Krustenstern has given of the mode adopted in Nukahiwa, one of the Washington Islands: "As soon as a Nukahiewer arrives at the age of puberty, his whole body is tatooed; an art carried to a much greater perfection in this island than in any other, as they paint, in fact, their bodies with different figures, rubbing a pleasing colour into the skin, which is first scratched until it bleeds.
He was peculiarly thin-skinned. The blue veins of his fair face made him seem to have been tatooed. Mr. Mackenzie was then astonishingly active, persevering, and intelligent, as he still is. A more able or a more indefatigable exposer of colonial abuses could not have appeared at a more fitting time. He was undoubtedly the right man in the right place.
"Ay," said Nena the head-man, a little wizen-faced but kindly-eyed old fellow, whose body was so deeply tatooed in broad vertical bands that scarcely a strip of brown skin could be seen "ay, ye must take my young men; for are ye not our guests, ye, and the brown sailor men as well? and they shall tend on ye all. That is our custom to strangers who have come to us as friends."
Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in the South Seas, with his face and neck tatooed till he looks like the customary mendicant from Washoe who has been blown up in a mine.
The prisoners leaped up, feeling almost instinctively that there hour had come. A moment later and the hut was filled with natives. All were naked, with the exception of a small piece of cloth round their loins. They were tatooed, however, and painted nearly from head to foot.
A man who is not tatooed is no better than a woman. He is a male harlot and should be despised. He is only fit to associate with women, and has no right to beget children....
By slightly irritating, it conveys to the body pleasurable sensations. In Kafferland it has passed into a general fashion. No woman is without a tatooed skin; and their ingenuity is chiefly exercised between the breast and on the arms."
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