And now their love returned to them.
etc.

CHAPTER VII.

ADULT AND ADVANCED YEARS.

Passing from infancy and childhood we proceed to the ceremonies,
superstitions, and customs connected with more advanced years.

_Tattooing._--"Herodotus found among the Thracians that the barbarians
could be exceedingly foppish after their fashion. The man who was not
tattooed among them was not respected." It was the same in Samoa.
Until a young man was tattooed, he was considered in his minority. He
could not think of marriage, and he was constantly exposed to taunts
and ridicule, as being poor and of low birth, and as having no right
to speak in the society of men. But as soon as he was tattooed he
passed into his majority, and considered himself entitled to the
respect and privileges of mature years. When a youth, therefore,
reached the age of sixteen, he and his friends were all anxiety that
he should be tattooed. He was then on the outlook for the tattooing of
some young chief with whom he might unite. On these occasions, six or
a dozen young men would be tattooed at one time; and for these there
might be four or five tattooers employed.

Tattooing is still kept up to some extent, and is a regular
profession, just as house-building, and well paid. The custom is
traced to Taema and Tilafainga (see p. 55); and they were worshipped
by the tattooers as the presiding deities of their craft.

The instrument used in the operation is an oblong piece of human bone
(_os ilium_), about an inch and a half broad and two inches long. A
time of war and slaughter was a harvest for the tattooers to get a
supply of instruments. The one end is cut like a small-toothed comb,
and the other is fastened to a piece of cane, and looks like a little
serrated adze. They dip it into a mixture of candle-nut ashes and
water, and, tapping it with a little mallet, it sinks into the skin;
and in this way they puncture the whole surface over which the
tattooing extends. The greater part of the body from the waist down to
the knee is covered with it, variegated here and there with neat
regular stripes of the untattooed skin, which when they are well
oiled, make them appear in the distance as if they had on black silk
knee-breeches. Behrens, in describing these natives in his narrative
of Roggewein's voyage of 1772, says: "They were clothed from the waist
downwards with fringes and a kind of