nd the other being a small
wooden plug, also sharpened. The operator first visibly, but silently,
engages in two incantations, during the former of which he holds up
the thumb and first finger of his right hand, and during the latter
of which he holds up the two instruments. He then with the thumb
and first finger of his right hand holds the septum of the nose of
the person to be operated upon, whom I will call the "patient," and
with the left hand pierces the septum with the bone instrument. He
next inserts the wooden plug into the hole, so as to make it larger,
and leaves the plug there. Then he takes a blade of grass, which he
also inserts through the hole, by the side of the plug, and, holding
the grass by the two ends, he makes it rotate round and round the
plug. This is a painful process, which frequently causes tears and
cries from the patient. He then probably goes through the same process
with various other patients, as it is the custom to operate on several
persons at the same time.

The patients are then all lodged in houses built for the purpose, one
house being for men and one for women. These are not houses which are
kept permanently standing, but are specially built on each occasion
on which the nose-boring operation is going to be performed. A great
swelling of the patients' noses develops, and this spreads more or
less over their faces. The patients are confined in the special houses
until the holes in their noses are large enough and the wounds are
healed. During this confinement each patient has himself to do what
is requisite to further enlarge the hole by the insertion into it from
time to time of pieces of wood and by putting in rolled up leaves and
pushing pieces of wood inside these leaves. During all this period he
is not allowed to come out of the house, at all events not so as to be
seen, and his diet is confined to sweet potato, cooked in a certain
way. The cooking for all the patients, men and women, is done by the
woman nose-piercing operator, assisted by other women. The potatoes
are wrapped up in leaves (usually banana), each potato being generally
wrapped up separately in one or more leaves; and, when so wrapped up,
they are cooked in red-hot ashes, and then taken to the houses where
the patients are.

When the hole in any patient's nose has reached the requisite size,
and the wound is healed, he inserts a large croton leaf [41] into
the hole; he may then come out and return to his own