dried fish, skins, and iron. Many of the men are intelligent-looking,
with well-shaped heads, agreeable faces, and high foreheads. We soon
learned to forget colour, and we frequently saw countenances resembling
those of white people we had known in England, which brought back the
looks of forgotten ones vividly before the mind. The men take a good
deal of pride in the arrangement of their hair; the varieties of style
are endless. One trains his long locks till they take the admired form
of the buffalo's horns; others prefer to let their hair hang in a thick
coil down their backs, like that animal's tail; while another wears it in
twisted cords, which, stiffened by fillets of the inner bark of a tree
wound spirally round each curl, radiate from the head in all directions.
Some have it hanging all round the shoulders in large masses; others
shave it off altogether. Many shave part of it into ornamental figures,
in which the fancy of the barber crops out conspicuously. About as many
dandies run to seed among the blacks as among the whites. The Man ganja
adorn their bodies extravagantly, wearing rings on their fingers and
thumbs, besides throatlets, bracelets, and anklets of brass, copper, or
iron. But the most wonderful of ornaments, if such it may be called, is
the pelele, or upper-lip ring of the women. The middle of the upper lip
of the girls is pierced close to the septum of the nose, and a small pin
inserted to prevent the puncture closing up. After it has healed, the
pin is taken out and a larger one is pressed into its place, and so on
successively for weeks, and months, and years. The process of increasing
the size of the lip goes on till its capacity becomes so great that a
ring of two inches diameter can be introduced with ease. All the
highland women wear the pelele, and it is common on the Upper and Lower
Shire. The poorer classes make them of hollow or of solid bamboo, but
the wealthier of ivory or tin. The tin pelele is often made in the form
of a small dish. The ivory one is not unlike a napkin-ring. No woman
ever appears in public without the pelele, except in times of mourning