widely-diffused practices of savage life, having been found, even in
modern times, to exist, in one modification or another, not only in most
of the inhabited lands of the Pacific, from New Zealand as far north as
the Sandwich Isles, but also among many of the aboriginal tribes both of
Africa and America. In the ancient world it appears to have been at
least equally prevalent. It is evidently alluded to, as well as the
other practice that has just been noticed, of wounding the body by way
of mourning, in the twenty-eighth verse of the nineteenth chapter of
Leviticus, among the laws delivered to the Israelites through
Moses:--"Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor
print any marks upon you," both of these being doubtless habits of the
surrounding nations, which the chosen people, according to their usual
propensity, had shown a disposition to imitate.

The few civilized communities of antiquity seem to have been all of them
both singularly incurious as to the manners and conditions of the
barbarous races by whom they were on all sides so closely encompassed,
and, as might be expected, extremely ill-informed on the subject; so
much so, as has been remarked by an author who has written on this topic
with admirable learning and ability, that when Hanno, the Carthaginian,
returned from his investigation of a small part of the west coast of
Africa, he had no difficulty in making his countrymen believe that two
hides, with the hair still on, which he brought back with him, and which
he had taken from two large apes, were actually the skins of savage
women, and deserving of being suspended in the temple of Juno as most
uncommon curiosities.

But, little as these matters seem in general to have attracted the
attention of the ancient writers, their works still contain many notices
of the practice of tattooing. We may cite only one or two of a