Sperm Tooth Earings With Leaves

From a larger description of Mehevi’s attire in Melville’s Typee (chapter 11):

Around his neck were several enormous necklaces of boars’ tusks, polished like ivory, and disposed in such a manner as that the longest and largest were upon his capacious chest. Thrust forward through the large apertures in his ears were two small and finely shaped sprerm-whale teeth, presenting their cavities in front, stuffed with freshly-plucked leaves, and curiously wrought at the other end into strange little images and devices. These barbaric trinkets, garnished in this manner at their open extremities, and tapering and curving round to a point behind the ear, resembled not a little a pair of cornucopias.

Melville also describes Mehevi’s feathered head-dress, ornamented spear and pipe, and tatoos. He concludes the description of Mehevi with:

The warrior, from the excellence of his physical proportions, might certainly have been regarded as one of Nature’s noblemen, and the lines drawn upon his face may possibly have denoted his exalted rank.

Tags: ornamental weapon, pipe, tatoo