I
could not bring myself to admire Gondebiza, the princess royal,--
what is grotesque in one sex becomes unsightly in the other. Fat,
thirty, and perhaps once fair, her charms had seen their prime,
and the system of circles and circlets which composed her
personnel had assumed a tremulous and gravitating tendency. She
was habited in the height of Fan fashion. Her body was modestly
invested in a thin pattern of tattoo, and a gauze-work of oil and
camwood; the rest of the toilette was a dwarf pigeon-tail of fan-
palm, like that of the men, and a manner of apron, white beads,
and tree bark, greasy and reddened: the latter was tucked under
and over the five lines of cowries, which acted as cestus to the
portly middle, "big as a budget." The horns of hair, not unlike
the rays of light in Michael Angelo's "Moses," were covered with
a cap of leaves, and they were balanced behind by a pigtail
lashed with brass wire. Her ornaments were sundry necklaces of
various beads, large red and white, and small blue and pink
porcelains; a leaf, probably by way of amulet, was bound to a
string round the upper arm; and wrists and ankles were laden with
heavy rings of brass and copper, the parure of the great in Fan-
land.
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