The breast or back, of both sexes, is usually tattooed, or rather, scored with rows of hideous raised scars, produced by deep gashes made at puberty.
The gashes varied in patterns for the different tribes.
Actually rock crystals, they occur in the tension gashes that can be seen in the Devonian sandstone cliffs at various localities.
The fanaticism of the Meccan is an affair of the purse; the mongrel population (for the town is by no means purely Arab) has exchanged the virtues of the Bedouin for the worst corruptions of Eastern town life, without casting off the ferocity of the desert, and it is hardly possible to find a worse certificate of character than the three parallel gashes on each cheek, called Tashrit, which are the customary mark of birth in the holy city.
