Two instruments are used for the operation, one being a piercing instrument made of pig bone and sharpened, and 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 house, retaining the croton leaf in his nose.  He must next occupy himself in searching for a black non-poisonous snake about 12 or 18 inches long, which is commonly found in the grass.  I cannot say what snake this is, but I am advised that it is probably Tropidonotus mairii.  Its native name is fal’ ul’ obe, which means “germ of the ground.”  Until he finds this snake he must keep the croton