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Updated: May 17, 2025
The practice of tatooing is very common in the navy; and you will see a sailor's arm covered with emblems from the shoulder to the wrist; his own initials, that of his sweetheart, the crucifix, Neptune, and mermaids being huddled together, as if mythology and Scripture were one and the same thing.
The contributions from the Marquesas and Sandwich Islands are in cases 53-56; the war dresses, of feathers, &c., from Tahiti, in case 57; and the nets and baskets, clubs and tatooing instruments from the Friendly Islands will be found arranged in cases 65, 66.
It was indented all over with minute lines, not very unlike the tatooing on a South Sea islander's face; and it bore, just over the chest, a lion's head made of brass, from a ring attached to which were suspended about twenty or thirty brass pipe-pickers.
This seems properly enough corrected on the margin by Hakluyt, by the word Comori, or the country about Cape Comorin. Simoltra or Sumatra. Hakluyt. Probably alluding to tatooing, which will be explained in the voyages to the islands of the Pacific ocean. Of certain Trees which produce Meal, Honey, Wine, and Poison.
These Amu people have the same Wahuma features as Kamrasi, whom they also resemble both in general physical appearance, and in many of them having circular marks, as if made by cautery, on the forehead and temples. These marks I took not to be tatooing or decorative, but as a cure for disease cautery being a favourite remedy with both races.
It was remarkable, that not one of them had adopted the practice, so generally prevalent among the people of the southern Ocean, of puncturing or tatooing their bodies.
The tatooing which Mr Barrow speaks of, as practised in part of Africa where he travelled, one should incline to imagine very different from what is in fashion at Otaheite, which, according to our text, affords any other than pleasurable sensations to the person undergoing this operation. The reader may judge for himself, at least so far as idea goes.
A curious engraving on a bone represents the head and arm of a man, and on the lower part of the forearm it is easy to make out a four-sided design which evidently indicated tatooing. In every country, and in every climate, we find men as well as women manifesting a taste for ornament.
Are you tatooed on your body, snakes and ships and things, like a gardener once we had? He had a sea-serpent all down his back. He showed me one day." The Captain smiled proudly. "Tatooed! Talk of tatooing! I'll show yer and it isn't everybody I'd do it for neither. But I've taken a fancy to you, like my own young nipper what died."
A piece of ivory is then inserted under the flap and left in until the wound has healed, the result being a knob of skin elevated above the level of the rest of the surface. All the tatouage in the Congo consists in raising the skin in this manner, but in each district the design is different. Simple tatooing by pricking in colours does not appear to be practised at all.
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