Almost all the men had their names traced upon their arms, in indelible characters of a black colour, and the women had a square ornament of flourished lines, impressed in the same manner, just under the bend of the elbow.  We were struck with the similitude between these marks and those made by tattowing in the South-Sea islands, and upon enquiring into its origin, we learnt that it had been practised by the natives long before any Europeans came among them, and that in the neighbouring islands the inhabitants were marked with circles upon their necks and breasts.  The universality of this practice, which prevails among savages in all parts of the world, from the remotest limits of North America, to the islands in the South-Seas, and which probably differs but little from the method of staining the body that was in use among the ancient inhabitants of Britain, is a curious subject of speculation.[107]

[Footnote 107:  In the account which Mr Bossu has given of some Indians who inhabit the banks of the Akanza, a river of North America, which rises in New Mexico, and falls into the Mississippi, he relates the following incident:  “The Akanzas,” says he, “have adopted me, and as a mark of my privilege, have imprinted the figure of a roebuck upon my thigh, which was done in this manner:  An Indian having burnt some straw, diluted the ashes with water, and with this mixture drew the figure upon my skin; he then retraced it, by pricking the lines with needles, so as at every puncture just to draw the blood, and the blood mixing with the ashes of the straw, forms a figure which can never be effaced.”  See Travels through Louisiana, vol. i, p. 107.

So far this note is by Dr Hawkesworth.  Some observations on the practice of staining or tattowing the body, have been offered in another part of this work.  It may be worth while to add here the account which Krustenstern has given of the mode adopted in Nukahiwa, one of the Washington Islands:  “As soon as a Nukahiewer arrives at the age of puberty, his whole body is tatooed; an art carried to a much greater perfection in this island than in any other, as they paint, in fact, their bodies with different figures, rubbing a pleasing colour into the skin, which is first scratched until it bleeds.  Black is the colour generally used for this purpose, which, after some time, takes a bluish tinge.  The king, his father, and the high-priest, were the only persons who were coloured quite black, nor was any part of their bodies left unadorned; the face, eye-lids, and even a part of their heads, from which the hair had been shaved, being tatooed.  Neither in the Society nor the Friendly Islands is this customary.  In the latter, the king alone is not tatooed; and it is only in New Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands, as Captain King relates, where the face is tatooed.  The New Zealander and the Nukahiwer have a similar mode of performing this operation; for instance, they not only mark the body with single upright figures,