Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 312 of 777 - First - Home
It Appears To
Me Probable, As I Have Already Hinted Above, That The Preference Given
By The Americans To The Red Colour Is Generally Founded On The
Tendency Which Nations Feel To Attribute The Idea Of Beauty To
Whatever Characterises Their National Physiognomy.
Men whose skin is
naturally of a brownish red, love a red colour.
If they be born with a
forehead little raised, and the head flat, they endeavour to depress
the foreheads of their children. If they be distinguished from other
nations by a thin beard, they try to eradicate the few hairs that
nature has given them. They think themselves embellished in proportion
as they heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of their
national conformation.
We were surprised to see, that, in the camp of Pararuma, the women far
advanced in years were more occupied with their ornaments than the
youngest women. We saw an Indian female of the nation of the Ottomacs
employing two of her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair
with the oil of turtles' eggs, and painting her back with anato and
caruto. The ornament consisted of a sort of lattice-work formed of
black lines crossing each other on a red ground. Each little square
had a black dot in the centre. It was a work of incredible patience.
We returned from a very long herborization, and the painting was not
half finished. This research of ornament seems the more singular when
we reflect that the figures and marks are not produced by the process
of tattooing, but that paintings executed with so much care are
effaced,* if the Indian exposes himself imprudently to a heavy shower.
(* The black and caustic pigment of the caruto (Genipa americana)
however, resists a long time the action of water, as we found with
regret, having one day, in sport with the Indians, caused our faces to
be marked with spots and strokes of caruto.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 312 of 777
Words from 84273 to 84596
of 211397