Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places, Some account of Savu, page 327

Page 327

Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places

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Some account of Savu (continued)

men cheifly of distinction round their necks in the form of a solitaire, others had them round their wrists &c, but the women had the largest quantity which they wore round their waists in the form of a girdle serving to keep up their waistcloths. Both sexes had their ears bord universaly but we never saw any ornaments in them; indeed we never saw any one man dressd the whole time we were there in [any] thing more than his ordinary cloths. Some boys of 12 or 14 years of age wore also circles of thick brass wire which pass’d screw fashion 3 or 4 times round their arms above the elbow, and some men wore rings of ivory, convex, 2 inches in breadth and above an inch in thickness, in the same manner above the joint of the elbow: these we were told were the sons of Radjas who alone had the priviledge of wearing these cumbersome badges of high birth.

Almost all the men had their names tracd upon their arms in indelible characters of Black; the women had a square ornament of flourishd lines on the inner part of each arm just under the bend of the elbow. On enquiring into the antiquity of this custom, so consonant with that of Tattowing in the South Sea Islands, Mr Lange told us that

Voyaging Accounts

© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 362, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-327.html