Introduction

Introduction

In surveying the social aspects of the barbarian world, we discover many striking phenomena. The relations of the sexes, among uneducated races, appear modified by every circumstance of their position; but everywhere the natural ascendancy of the strong over the weak is displayed. A few savage communities allow women a position nearly level with that of the men; but wherever this is the case, a degree of civilization has been attained.

If we divide mankind into two classes--the civilized and the savage--forming an ideal of both extremes, we shall not find one tribe or community to occupy either pole of our supposed sphere. No one requires to be told that every part of the human race is still below the perfect development of its good attributes; but the observation is equally true, though less generally accepted, that every family of creatures showing our nature has advanced beyond the utterly savage state. When we find men wandering not only unclothed, but unhoused, over the earth, and following only their animal propensities, we may regard them as wholly untaught. At present no such tribe is known. Every human being that has come under our notice has progressed beyond the simple gratification of his appetites. The love of ornament and the practice of exchange have raised him one step in the scale.

The Africans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the ruder tribes of the Pacific Isles, the Dyaks of Borneo, and the natives of Sumatra and Celebes, with the Indians of North and South America, may be included under the appellation barbarous. They vary, however, in the characteristics of their barbarism, as the nations of Europe vary in the characteristics of their civilization. They are even divided into classes. (1) The hunters, with little property in the soil, precarious means of existence, and migratory habits; the fishers, who are only the hunters of the sea; (2) the pastoral tribes, with property in herds and flocks, nomade, and therefore little property in the soil; (3) the agricultural tribes, permanently or temporarily fixed to localities, whose means of life are less precarious, and whose habits are more regular than those of the two former. The third is the most educated, the second the most innocent, the first the most simple state. It is among the shepherds that women enjoy most consideration, and that morality is highest. The hunters are more savage, and the tillers of the earth more sensual.

In judging the condition of the female sex, it is always necessary to hold in view the general state of manners. When we inquire how husbands behave to their wives, and how parents treat their daughters, we must ask also how they live themselves. Where the male sex is degraded the female will be so. On the other hand, the refinement of any people may be estimated by the condition of its women. The islanders of Celebes are among the most elevated of barbarian races, and the sexes are nearly on an equality. The hordes of Western Africa are the most gross and ferocious of savages, and their women are treated as reptiles. The Indians of North America offer, apparently, an exception to this rule, for their lofty, proud, and polished warriors behave contemptuously to the squaws in their wigwam, who crouch to the earth while their lords stand haughtily before the most powerful conquerors. But the Choctaws and the Cherokees are in reality as far removed from true civilization as the dwellers in New Zealand. The amenities and not the arts of life civilize men. Wherever in the Indian village the gentler influences of humanity prevail, the feebler sex is treated with respect and affection.

The points of contrast between barbarian and civilized races display themselves strongly in relation to the condition of the female sex. Throughout the savage portions of Africa one system of manners prevails. The men occupy the lowest stage of the social scale. They are neither hunters, fishers, shepherds, nor tillers of the soil; but mix up several occupations, though none of an elevating character. Some raise a few materials of food; others collect ivory in the woods; others live on the profits of the slave-trade; but the greater number subsist on the refuse of what they gain in the service of their petty kings. They have been sophisticated from the simplicity of savages without acquiring one grace from civilization. Subject to the gross caprice of princes more miserable than themselves, they have remained beyond the reach of every humanizing influence, and, as a natural consequence, their women are debased. Polygamy produces its worst results. The wife is an object of barter; a slave, whose labour assists to support her owner. In some parts diligence is more valued than chastity. In others the husband makes a profit from his wife’s prostitution. The slave trade has assisted largely towards this melancholy state of manners. The finer sentiments of humanity are altogether lost, and the contempt for life, as well as for all that is amiable or pure, has reduced men far below the level of the brute creation. We speak literally in saying that a nobler, happier spectacle is presented among the antelope and elephant herds than among the swarms of men and women corrupting in Africa. In the few parts where the male sex has risen from this debasement, the female has been equally improved. The barbarous Edeeyahs offer an example.

The savages of Australia differ in many respects from those of Western Africa. They are even less educated, but they are also less ferocious; their women are their abject servitors, but there is more humanity in their treatment. They have scarcely approached so near to the forms of regular society, as to systematize the intercourse of the sexes. Nevertheless, among some tribes we not only find the institution of marriage respected, but wives guarded with Turkish jealousy. Among a people which does not dwell in regular habitations, or even lodge in roomy tents, it is scarcely possible to imagine the sanctity of a man’s harem; but it is true, notwithstanding, that a similar seclusion is enforced. The Australian woman, in the desert and under the open sky, is hedged round by her husband’s jealousy as securely as the ancient German was in her unwalled shelter of thatch.

It is seldom, however, that among barbarous races we find the sentiment of chastity in its abstract sense. Women are generally treated as though their inclinations were licentious, and in this consists one great line of distinction between civilization and barbarism. With the one, moral influence--with the other, material force, is employed as the guardian of female honour. The result is important to be noticed. Women are depraved by the rude and gross means devised to keep them virtuous. Where the moral sentiment is feebly developed, guilt is created by the efforts made to prevent it. The wife perpetually watched, as though her heart were full of adultery, becomes an adulteress. The young girl continually guarded, with the avowed object of compelling her to be chaste, loses insensibly any natural feeling she may have possessed, and covets the opportunity to sin.

In the South Sea Islands this truth is illustrated; in New Zealand it is still more strongly proved. It is taken for granted that a woman will prostitute herself if she can. The state of morality is consequently so low that it is difficult for parents to preserve a daughter’s virtue until she is given in marriage. To prevent her holding vicious intercourse she is forbidden to hold any intercourse with the opposite sex.

Another characteristic of civilized races is the separation of the vicious from the moral classes; they systematize the offences against society. Every class of vile persons becomes, as it were, an isolated community; the prostitute is segregated from the rest of her sex. In some barbarian states, as in Dahomey, the same division is effected; but the kings of that country have sought to mimic the forms of educated communities. The professional is distinguished from the habitual prostitute only by her open assumption of the title; but the immorality of the female sex in Dahomey is far from being represented by the order of confessed harlots.

The inhabitants of some islands, and the shores of bays and roadsteads, have discovered that in prostituting their women to the crews of trading ships they have a readier means of subsistence than was offered by their former industry. This has produced a frightful system of vicious commerce, which still prevails to a great extent in the Pacific, as well as in New Zealand and the ports of Africa. It is for Europeans to repair the evil created by the incontinence of their predecessors. Many captains of vessels have already effected much good by forbidding women to come on board.

In proportion as nations approach the higher stages of civilization does the respect for human life increase. Infanticide is practised with the least remorse by the most savage tribes. Among those communities with whom the means of existence are precarious this crime is most common. Wherever barbarians have been induced to labour, and secured in the enjoyment of their earnings, the natural feelings of the breast have revived; and mothers who have slain six infants cherish the seventh as a sacred possession. Missionary enterprise has produced much good in this respect; while the beneficent rule of our Indian government has bestowed incalculable blessings on the people of the East, among whom the system of infanticide is daily becoming rarer, and the condition of women more elevated.

The same may be remarked of that unnatural practice upon which, as indeed on all kindred subjects, writers are reluctant to touch--that, we mean, of destroying the unborn fruits of union. The savage regards it as an act rather meritorious for its ingenuity than abominable for its unnatural character. The cause that encourages infanticide encourages this, which, indeed, is the less horrible crime. The woman is less reluctant to extinguish the vitality of a being which has become to her dear only in anticipation, than to quench a life which has once been embodied before her eyes, and warmed in her bosom. The operation, so dangerous to females in civilized communities, is, like childbirth, far easier among savages. The native of the Bornean woods, without any of the delicacy engendered by luxury, may one moment be without a pang giving birth to an infant, and the next be washing it in a neighbouring brook. The Malayan lady, bred in a city in indolence and comfort, suffers agony under which she sometimes perishes before her offspring has breathed. So it is with the practice of destroying the unborn child. Civilization lessens in all creatures their means of independent life, and their powers of endurance; but it also enables them to discover or compound the elements by which these artificial ills may be remedied.

In proportion as the intercourse of the sexes is loose is the difficulty of learning the actual extent of immoral practices. The prostitute class, as we proceed from the pure savage to the highest point of civilization, becomes more and more distinct--being more conspicuous because more isolated. This is accompanied by another process, which is a superior standard by which to measure the social elevation of a people. Women respect themselves in proportion as men respect them. Where locks and bolts, scourges and cudgels, are the guardians of female chastity, it is only preserved when there is no opportunity to lose it. When the protecting influence springs from within, the woman moves a virtuous being, defended even from a licentious glance by the impenetrable cloud which her native modesty and virtue diffuse around her.

OF PROSTITUTION AMONG AFRICAN NATIONS.

In the wide field of inquiry presented by the barbarian races of our own time, Africa occupies a prominent place. Some of the most wild and savage tribes of the human family are to be found on that immense peninsula. Many degrees in the inferior scale of civilization are represented, from the uncouth Hottentots of the south to the wandering Arabs of the desert, in whose blameless lives we have a picture of original simplicity--not far removed from the real refinement, though very far from the vices, of the most polished among the communities of Europe. The inquiry we have made into the condition of women and the state of manners in Africa, has confirmed us in our opinion, which is supported also by many circumstances observed among other races of men. The medium of refinement is accompanied by the least immorality. As in our own, among other civilized states, the ratio of profligacy is greatest at the opposite poles of society--the wealthiest and the most indigent--so in Africa it is among the basest savages and among the most highly polished communities that immorality prevails to the greatest extent. The brutal hordes on the western coast, with the populations of the half-civilized cities of the north, abound in vices, while the barbarian though innocent communities, with the wandering dwellers in the desert, are characterised by manners far more pure.

In ranging over Africa in search of facts to complete the present inquiry, we meet with numerous tribes belonging to seven separate races of mankind: the Hottentot, the Kaffir, the Negro, the Moor, the Abyssinian, the Arab, and the Copts or descendants of the true Egyptian stock. Among each of these we perceive some varieties of manners; but everywhere in Africa one circumstance is prominent--the degraded condition of the female sex. The women of Cairo and Algiers are in comparison treated with little more refinement than those of some purely savage states; but we shall not include such communities among the barbarian races, reserving Egypt and some of the other countries characterised by a mongrel civilization for separate notices. We may, as far as our present inquiry goes, present the subject clearly and without confusion by making a geographical arrangement, and, commencing from the south, pass over the continent, until we encounter a form of civilization in the valley of the Lower Nile.

The condition of women generally in heathen countries is degraded. As we proceed through Africa this truth will be strongly illustrated. Commencing with the Hottentots of the south, we find them a dissolute profligate race, who have been so from the earliest period. It was remarked in 1655 by Van Riebeck, when the chiefs, departing on a distant expedition, were urged to leave their women behind, they replied “that their wives must be with them everywhere so as to be kept from the other men.” It was remarked also in 1840 by Colonel Napier, who describes them as proverbially unchaste. Polygamy, at the early period referred to, was prevalent. Men bought their wives--sometimes from their wealthier, sometimes from their poorer, neighbours; but all alliances between persons of near kindred were held in utter abhorrence. Indecency and lewdness are their characteristics, for though now accustomed to clothing, it is no uncommon thing for them, when drunk at their festivals, to strip naked and perform lascivious dances, to music of the rudest harmony. Many among them appear to prostitute themselves readily to strangers, some from inclination, others for money, many for a gift of finery; but in what numbers this disreputable class exists we have no means of knowing[42]. A superior order, however, is scattered among these degraded creatures, and many lively, intelligent, and well-conducted women have attracted the notice of travellers.

The pastoral Kaffirs are perhaps a more moral though a more ferocious people than the Hottentots. They are, indeed, superior in mental and physical characteristics, being more addicted to arms, and less to debauch. They also, however, practise polygamy, and buy their wives for so many head of cattle. Among them, as well as among the Bechuanas, the girls undergo a probation before marriage, during which they live apart, and hold no intercourse with their tribe except through an old woman. Sichele, king of the Bechuanas, had numerous wives, of whom one was a favourite; but he granted each a separate hut, so that his palace was a kind of village surrounded by a fence. They punish theft in a woman by twisting dry grass round her fingers and burning them to the bone. Wandering from place to place in tent-shaped temporary huts, they carry their women with them, and condemn them to domestic labour. Even the chief’s wives assist in grinding the corn, and tending their husband’s nomade household. Divorce is easy, on very slight grounds. We occasionally hear of women committing what is termed fornication, but no professed class of prostitutes has been described. As among all nations practising polygamy, marriage is not held as a sacred tie; but adultery on the wife’s part is severely punished as an infraction of the social law. The bonds of natural affection appear extremely weak among the Kaffir tribes. Men are inspired by an inclination, not an attachment, to their wives, and mothers possess less affection for their children than is observed even in the Australian savage. The weak and sickly are sometimes abandoned, to save the expense or trouble of their support. Mrs. Ward knew of a woman who, having a little daughter in a decline, buried it alive, to be rid of the burden. The little creature, imperfectly interred, burst from its grave and ran home. Again it was forced into the hole, again it escaped, and a third time it was removed to the earth; once more, however, it struggled till free, and, flying to its mother’s hut, was at last received, and ultimately recovered. Such instances of inhumanity are not rare among the Kaffir tribes, whose passion for blood and war seems to have blunted some of their natural sentiments. Husbands, when their wives are sick, frequently drag them into a neighbouring thicket, where they are left to die, and women continually do the same with their poor offspring. It is important, however, to mention, that in the instances of Kaffirs converted to Christianity their manners undergo a most favourable modification. One of them was known to Mrs. Ward who had refused to take a second wife, in deference to the moral law laid down by the interpreters of his adopted religion; and, where the conversion is sincere, they always manifest an inclination to practise the manners of the white men[43].

In the rude maritime region extending from the countries on the border of the Cape territory as far as the Senegal, a set of characteristic features is universally marked on the people, varied though their nationality be. Differences, of course, prevail among the numerous tribes in the several states; but the impress of African civilization is there all but uniform.

Those between the tropics, especially, are absorbed in licentiousness. Morality is a strange idea to them. Polygamy is universally practised, and in most places without limitation; while nowhere is a man restrained by the social law from intercourse with any number of females he chooses. The result is that women are, for the most part, looked upon as a marketable commodity; that the pure and exalted sentiment of love is utterly unknown; and that even the commonest feelings of humanity appear absent from among them. Husbands, for instance, on the Gold Coast, are known to prostitute their wives to others for a sum of money. This is an open transaction. In other places, however, where the adulterer pays a fine to the husband he has injured, we find men allowing their wives an opportunity to be unfaithful, in order to obtain the price of the crime. Throughout, indeed, the gloomy and savage states, sheltered by the woods bordering the Niger, and over the whole western coast, mankind appears in its uncouthest form. Human nature, degraded by perpetual war against itself, rots at the feet of a gross superstition. As we have said, the result is developed in various modifications of barbarian manners.

When Laird, in 1832, visited the Niger, he found the condition of the female sex upon its borders most humiliating. In the dominions of King Boy polygamy was unlimited, and the wives reduced to slavery in their own homes. The people dwelling on the banks of the Lower Niger may be described, in fact, as among the most idle, ignorant, and profligate in Africa. The prince himself set the example to his subjects. He possessed 140 wives and concubines, of whom one was no more than thirteen years of age, whom he had purchased for a few muskets and a piece of cloth. Half a dozen enjoyed the distinction of favourites; one of them was more than 25 stones in weight. The mother of this pluralist was maintained in her son’s palace, where she amused the court by dances of the most revolting and obscene description. No care was, in any respect, taken to preserve a sense of virtue in the king’s harem; but adultery was, nevertheless, punished with death. This appears the case in most countries where shame holds no check on immorality; it may, indeed, be taken in some measure as an index to the state of manners where crimes against chastity are visited with public infamy alone, or with legal penalties. In the dominions of Boy, one wife, at least, was expected to attend her husband, even when dead. The chosen victim was bound and thrown into the river; a mode of death preferable to that practised at Calabar, on the coast, where the miserable woman is buried alive. In the kingdom of Fundals, when a chief died leaving fifteen women in his harem, the king selected one to be hung over the tomb, and transferred the rest to his own palace; nevertheless, a few of these enjoyed an independent existence. One lively intelligent woman possessed an estate of land and 200 slaves, whom she employed in trade. Industry flourished, there being small competition, as a more idle demoralized people than the dwellers on the Niger as far as Ebo cannot be imagined.

Above that place, where the land is less marshy and more favourable to cultivation, the natives are more intelligent, more addicted to agriculture, more manly in their habits, and in proportion more kind and respectful to their women. Polygamy, it is true, prevails, as it does all over Western Africa, but the sex is somewhat raised above a mere instrument of sensual gratification. In other directions the old features are resumed. The Bambarras, a Pagan people, marry as many wives as they can support; and the Mandingoes, who are only allowed four, treat them as slaves, though they love their children.

The native of Western Africa, in most cases, looks upon his wife, in one respect as a source of pleasure, in another as a source of gain, reckoning her as property to the amount she can earn by labour. In the institution of marriage, therefore, it may easily be conceived that no sacred tie is acknowledged. It is merely a civil contract, to be dissolved at will. The man sends a present to the woman’s father; if a virgin, she exchanges her leathern girdle for a cloth wrapped about the loins, and a little merry-making consummates the transaction. This account applies especially to the Tilatates. In Yarriba and Bughor, when a woman finds herself enceinte, she is obliged to inform her husband, or suffer a public whipping when the discovery is made. This custom refers, there is no doubt, to a feature in the morals of the people. Mothers, also, are forced to suckle their children until three years old, and punished if, during that period, they cohabit with a man.

Strange inconsistencies occasionally display themselves in the manners of these unintellectual barbarians. They have introduced a feature of Asiatic luxury, by having eunuchs to guard their seraglios, while instances occur in which the uncouth savage professes a sentiment of attachment. The King of Attah told Lander that he loved him as he loved the wife who shared his bed. Yet he was a polygamist, and a sensualist. In Abookir the prince was continually multiplying the inmates of his harem, and having many daughters, had numbers of wives younger than they. Girls of eleven years old are there considered marriageable.

Regarded as a mere social contract, temporary or otherwise, marriage, in this region, is held among the most ordinary occurrences of life. A man arriving at the age of 20 takes one wife, and then another, increasing the number from four to 100, as his circumstances allow. Many women, even under this system, cannot procure husbands. This, however, we must not ascribe so much to a vast preponderance of the female sex over the male, as to the fact that thousands of men take no permanent partners at all. It may, perhaps, be safe to assert that, of the single men, none remain without intercourse with women, and of the unmarried women, that not one preserves her chastity. The idea of that virtue appears foreign to those races. Adultery, indeed, is held a crime, but not so much against morals as against the husband. A wife suspected of it is compelled to drink a decoction called Sassy water, which poisons her, unless she bribes the priest to render it harmless by dilution, in which case she is pronounced innocent. The widow, even, who has been known to live on bad terms with her husband is forced, among the tribes on the banks of the Lower Niger, to undergo this ordeal. An illicit connection with the king’s wife, however, is punished with death to both parties, while among the chiefs the fine of a slave is exacted. Every woman, except the consort of royalty, has thus her market value, which is greatly increased if her friends fatten her up to a colossal size. Men frequently buy slender girls at a cheap rate, and feed them to a proper obesity before taking them as companions. Marriage, or concubinage, may be entered on at the age of thirteen, and so universal is the system in this part of Africa, that the sex seems absolutely wedded to its degradation.

Among the people of Ibu a singular custom exists. When twins are born they are immediately exposed to wild beasts. The mother, compelled to go through a long course of purification and penance, is thenceforward an outlaw, disgraced among the women, who hold up two fingers as she passes, to remind her of the misfortune:--she is at once divorced from her husband.

Though thus reduced to slavery by the other sex, women, among these tribes, enjoy a certain degree of freedom, which is a mitigation of their miserable state. Married without their own consent, they are sold to a husband for from 26_s._ and upwards, and thenceforward become his servants. Yet the favourite wives of the rich, exempt from toil, are allowed to amuse themselves in various ways, and even to walk about unveiled, under the guard of an eunuch. Men never eat with their wives, and often treat them brutally, bewailing the loss of a slave far more than the death of a wife, unless she happens to please the caprice of the hour. It is among the poorest that most freedom is allowed, and among those tribes who have intercourse with Europeans that most ferocity prevails. Some dig the soil, some attend to the household, some support their husbands by the profits of a petty retail trade, while others, kept for his gratification, are allowed to idle. These favoured ones are often slaves. A handsome young one often sells for from 60,000 to 120,000 cowries (from 3_l._ 15_s._ to 7_l._ 10_s._[44]), while the price of a common wife is only 20,000 cowries (25_s._). Frequently, the man’s inclination changes its direction, and he sells one girl to purchase another. With many of the kings and chiefs a continual trade in women is common. King Bell, of the Cameroons, for instance, had more than 100 wives, and his wealth was increased by their numbers. In his dominions the young maidens had considerable liberty, sporting in the fields, and enjoying, for a few years, comparative independence of the men[45].

In the kingdom of Dahomey, on the Guinea Coast, we find some of the most remarkable institutions with respect to women which exist in the world. It has been the centre of the slave trade. Few of the comparatively fair aboriginal race exist, but in their place has been gathered a mixed population, incontestably one of the most profligate in Africa. Entering its seaport town the traveller is at once struck by the remarkable immodesty of the female population. Throughout the country the same characteristic is observable, though in a modified degree. Sir John Malcolm observed of the subjects of the Imaum of Muscat--manners they have none, and their habits are disgusting. The same description has been judiciously applied to the people of Dahomey. They are profligates, from the highest to the lowest--a bloody-minded savage race, delighting in human suffering, and finding their national pleasure in customs the most revolting and cruel that ever obtained in the world.

The king practises all these, and is superior in brutality and filthiness to any of his subjects. This has been a characteristic of the throne in Dahomey. He has thousands of wives, while his chiefs have hundreds, and the common people tens. The royal favourites are considered too sacred to be looked upon by vulgar eyes. Whenever they proceed along the public road, a bell is rung to warn all passengers of their approach, and every one must then turn aside or hide his face. If one of them commits adultery, she is, with her paramour, put to death. The harem is sacred against strangers, but the privileged nobility attend the royal feasts, where the king’s wives sit, attired in showy costumes of the reign of Charles II., drinking rum and leading the debauch. Those of an inferior class, or the concubines, are employed in trade, the profits of which accrue to their master. Every unmarried woman in Dahomey is virtually the property of the sovereign, who makes his choice among them. No one dares to dispute his will, or to claim a maiden towards whom he has signified his inclination.

When the king desires to confer honour on any favourite, he chooses a wife for him, and presents her publicly. In this case she performs the ceremony of handing to her husband a cup of rum, which is a sign of union. Otherwise no rite or ceremony whatever is essential. However, the man must finally take his wife or concubine, in the usual business manner, for if he seduces a maiden he must marry her, or pay to her parent or master 160,000 cowries (equal to 7_l._ 10_s._ of our money). Failing in this, he may be sold as a slave. This punishment also is inflicted on those who commit adultery with a common person’s wife. The rich often buy a number of concubines, live with them for a short time, and then sell them at a profit. It is in Dahomey, too, that the practice prevails of throwing a wife in the way of committing adultery for the sake of the penalty which her husband may exact from the criminal. It is commonly known that the king of Dahomey supports an army of several thousand Amazonian soldiers. These women dress in male attire, and are not allowed to marry, or supposed to hold intercourse with the other sex. They declare themselves, indeed, to have changed their nature. “We are men,” they say, “and no women.” In all things--courage and ferocity among the rest--they seek to preserve the character. They dwell in barracks, under the care of eunuchs; they practise wild war-dances, and, officered by their own sex, scorn the allurements of any weaker passion; they are, therefore, for the most part chaste. Vanity and superstition combine to guard their virtue. They boast of never encountering a man except in the field of battle. Thus their pride is enlisted in the service of their chastity. A charm is placed under the threshold of their common dwelling, as it is under that of the palace harem, which is supposed to strike with disease the bowels of any guilty woman who may cross it. So strong is this belief, that many incontinent Amazons have voluntarily revealed their crime, though well aware that the punishment of death will be, without mercy, dealt upon them as well as their lovers[46].

Most men have a favourite wife, and her privilege is valuable so long as her husband lives; but on his decease it entails a terrible obligation. The dying chief invites one or more of his principal wives to die with him, and these, with a number of slaves, varying according to his rank, are sacrificed at his tomb.

In consequence of the immense number of wives and concubines kept by the king and his wealthier subjects, numbers of the common people are forced to be content with the company of prostitutes, who are licensed in Dahomey, and subject to a particular tax. There is a band of them, according to Dalzel, who appears worthy of belief, in every village, though confined to a certain quarter, and they prostitute themselves to any who desire it, at a moderate fixed price. The profits thus obtained are often insufficient for their support, and they eke out their gains by breeding fowls, and other industrial occupations. Women also hire themselves out to carry heavy burdens, and they no doubt belong to the prostitute class. Norris saw 250 of these unfortunate women collected in a troop on a public occasion. The object of this institution, according to the king, was to save the respectable people from seduction. There were many men who could not get wives, and, unless prostitutes existed, they would seduce the wives or daughters of others. At Whyddah, on the coast, Mr. John Duncan was assailed by numbers of women who offered to “become his wives,” or, in other words, to prostitute themselves to him, for a drop of rum. Many of the poorer class strolled about naked, ready to accept any one for a miserable gratuity. In that city it was the custom when a man committed adultery, to press him into the king’s army. Formerly he was sacrificed, but the practice was abolished--prisoners of war furnishing “the annual customs” with victims. Whatever the punishment was, however, it was ineffectual to suppress the crime, as depravity was the general characteristic of the people. At Zapoorah, beyond Dahomey, a chief offered one of his wives for sale, and parents asked a price for their children; while at Gaffa, still further, the men are more jealous, and the women more modest. Adultery with the king’s wife was punished by impalement on a red-hot stake.

The dirty, lazy, and dull people of the Fantee coast, near Dahomey, wear the same moral aspect as the subjects of that kingdom. Women support the men. Parents would sell their children, husbands their wives, and women themselves, for a trifling sum. One woman was so desirous of changing her companion, that she took possession of a recent traveller’s bed, and could only be expelled by force. Marriage is a mere purchase--of from six to twenty wives and concubines. The rich support their harems at a great cost. The common price is sixteen dollars. Maidens are seldom bought when beyond fifteen or sixteen years of age, so that many men have wives younger than their daughters. The individual committing adultery is forced to buy his paramour at her original price. Contrary to the custom of Ibu and Bony, the mother of twins is, among the Fantees, held in great respect.

Along the coast of Benin manners, in most respects similar to these, prevail--public dancers acting as prostitutes in most of the native towns, and offering themselves for a wretched price. Every woman holds it an honour to be the king’s companion even for one night[47].

In Ashantee, where polygamy, as elsewhere in Africa, prevails, adultery is common, especially among the king’s wives, who, when discovered, are hewn to pieces. The manners of the people are profligate beyond anything of which in England we can realize an idea. In the country of the Kroomen, eastward on the Guinea Coast, where nearly all the labour devolves on women, men become independent by the possession of from twenty to forty wives. One practice prevailing there is characterized by an unusual depravity. The son, inheriting his father’s property, inherits also his wives, his own mother then becoming his slave. In the interior, on the banks of the Asinnee, we find a people among whom the men are industrious, and the women treated with respect. The consequence is a far higher standard of morality[48].

It is remarkable to find among the Edeeyahs of Fernando Po a strong contrast to these general characteristics of manners and morality in Western Africa. Generous, hospitable, humane, practising no murder, possessing no slaves, with only innocent rites, they treat their women with comparative consideration, and assign them far less than the usual amount of hard labour. To cook food, bear palm oil to market, and press the nuts, are their principal occupations. Polygamy is allowed, and when a man undertakes a journey, he is accompanied by one or more of his wives, who are much attached to their husbands and children.

The first wife taken by a man must be betrothed to him at least two years before marriage. During that period the lover must perform all the duties which otherwise would have been performed by her. He must go, indeed, through a probation resembling the servitude of Jacob for Rachel. Meanwhile the maiden is kept in a hut, concealed from the sight of the people. These courtships often begin while the girl is no more than thirteen or fourteen, and her lover only a youth; but if he seduces her before the two years are elapsed, he is severely punished. That time having expired the young wife is still kept in the hut, where she receives her husband’s visits until it is evident she is about to become a mother--or if not, for eighteen months. When she first appears publicly as a married woman, all the virgins of her tribe salute her and dance about her. These customs indicate far more purity and elevation of manners among the Edeeyahs than among any other people in Western Africa. They are only observed, however, with regard to the first wife, all the others being virtually no more than concubines governed by her. Some chiefs have upwards of a hundred, and the king more than twice that number.

Adultery is severely punished, but, nevertheless, not very rare. For the first offence both parties lose one hand. For the second the man, with his relatives, is heavily fined, and otherwise chastised, while the woman, losing the other hand, is driven as an outlaw into the woods. This exile is more terrible to the Edeeyahs than the mutilation[49].

In examining the condition of Africa, in the light we have chosen, it would entail a tiresome repetition to pass in review all the various groups of states sunk in barbarism. The natives are generally barbarian. Elevated slightly above the hunting or pure savage state, they have subdued some animals to their use, and practise some ingenious arts; but their manners are baser than those of any race below them in point of art and luxury. We have seen that in the West, with a few rare exceptions, profligacy is the universal feature of society. In the East it is almost equally so. Our knowledge of that coast, it is true, is less full than of the West; but travellers afford sufficient information to justify an opinion on the general state of manners. In Zulu, as an example of the rest, the king has a seraglio of fifteen hundred women, who are slaves to his caprice. His mother was in that condition when Isaacs visited the country. She endured corporal chastisement from her son. A number of women and boys, belonging to the royal harem, and suspected of illicit intercourse, were massacred by the prince’s orders. Adultery, indeed, was a thing of continual occurrence in the palace. Marriage is held among the people not as a sacred tie but as a state of friendship. All the people, however, are polygamists, and the laws of morality refer only to wives. With others the intercourse of the sexes is unrestrained. Men do not cohabit with their wives on the first night after their wedding. This ceremony among the rich is accompanied by a grand feast, though, as in other parts of Africa, the wife is bought--at the most for ten cows. A man cannot sell but may dismiss his wife, over whom also he has the power of life and death. Adultery is always capitally punished, that is, when discovered; for with eighty or ninety women in his possession, it is not always possible for the husband to watch their conduct--especially as they labour for his support. Girls are not allowed to marry or become concubines until the age of fourteen, until which period they go without clothing. The degrees of consanguinity, within which marriage is strictly prohibited, are very wide--an union being permitted only between the most distant relations.

It is necessary to observe that in the Zulu kingdom profligacy is more general among the men than among the women, for wives hold the marriage tie in great estimation. It is the unlimited power of the male sex over the other which forces it to become the prey of sensuality. Throughout the Eastern region, indeed, women are the mere instruments of pleasure, being bought and sold like cattle--forced to toil and live in drudgery for the benefit of their masters and husbands[50].

Among the nomade and stationary tribes of the Sahara, who are not aboriginal to that region, we have a different system of manners. In the Arabian communities you may find women ready to perform indecent actions, and even to prostitute themselves for money; but these are of the low classes. Cases of adultery are rare.

The Mohammedans believe that a man cannot have too many wives, or, at least, too many concubines. They declare it assists their devotion; but the feeling is one merely sensual. Pure sentiment is a thing in which they can scarcely believe. Rich men who are accustomed to travel in pursuit of trade, have one family at Ghadames, another, perhaps, at Ghat, and another at Soudan, and live with each of them by turns. These women stand in great fear of their husbands. The rich are veiled, and live in retirement; the poor do not; but all will unveil their faces to a stranger, if it can be done with safety. The white, or respectable women of Ghadames, never descend into the streets, or even into the gardens of their houses. The flat roof of their dwelling is their perpetual promenade, and a suite of two or three rooms their abode. It is said that in these retreats many of the women privately rule their husbands, though no men will confess the fact. Among the Marabouts it is held disgraceful to be unmarried, but shameful also to be under the wife’s control.

The negresses and half-castes who may be seen in the streets of the cities of the Sahara, are generally slaves. The women of the Touarik tribes, however, are by no means so. They belong to a fierce and warlike tribe, half vagrant, half stationary, and are bound by few restrictions. Their morals are described as superior to those of the lower class of women in Europe; though exceptions, of course, are found. One Touarik woman offered to prostitute herself to Richardson for a sum of money; or, as it was expressed, to become his wife.

Polygamy, though universally allowed in the Sahara, is not carried to an extent at all equal to that prevailing in the savage regions on the east and west. Three wives usually occupy the harem of a rich man. Marriage is, as usual with people of that religion, a civil contract with a shade of sanctity upon it, but celebrated with great feasts and rejoicings. The bridegroom is expected to live in retirement during two or three weeks. He occasionally walks about the town at evening alone, dressed in gay clothes of blue and scarlet, and bearing a fine long stave of brass or polished iron. He never speaks or is spoken to, and vanishes on meeting any one.

The manners of the communities in the Sahara are imperfectly known; but from the accounts we have received they appear to be of a far more elevated order than those of any other part of Africa. It is true that customs prevail which shock our ideas of decency. A chief, for instance, offered Richardson his two daughters as wives. It is also true that many women exist who follow the profession of prostitutes, though we have no distinct account of them. But immorality is usually among them a secret crime. Their general customs with regard to sexual intercourse are at least as pure as those of Europe. Among the wandering tribes of the desert the hardship of their lives, continual occupation, varied scenes of excitement, and contempt for sensual enjoyments, contribute to preserve chastity among their virtues; while the Marabouts of the cities are of a generally moral character. Intoxication never happens among the women. Still, the condition of the sex is degraded; for they are, with exceptions, regarded only as the materials of a man’s household, and ministers to the sensual enjoyments of his life[51]. The Mohammedans of Central Africa, bigoted as to dogmas, are nevertheless more liberal to women, who enjoy more consideration among them than in the more important strongholds of that religion[52].

The wandering Arabs of Algeria hold marriage as a business transaction, though the estimation of the sex is not low. The lover brings to the woman’s home ten head of cattle, with other presents, which usually form her dowry. The father asks, “How much does she whom you are going to have for wife cost you?” He replies, “A prudent and industrious woman can never be too dear.” She is dressed, placed on a horse, and borne to her new home amid rejoicing. She then drinks the cup of welcome, and thrusting a stick into the ground, declares, “As this stick will remain here until some one forces it away, so will I.” She then performs some little office to show she is ready for the duty of a wife, and the ceremony is ended[53].

Transferring our observations to Abyssinia, we find in its several divisions different characteristics of manners. In Tajura, on the Red Sea, profligacy is a conspicuous feature of society. Men live with their wives for a short period, and then sell them, maintaining thus a succession of favourites in their harems. Parents, also, are known not only to sell their daughters as wives, but to hire them out as prostitutes. One chief offered a traveller his daughter either as a temporary or a permanent companion; he showed another whom he would have sold for 100 dollars. One woman presented herself, stating, as a recommendation, that she had already lived with five men. These are nothing but prostitutes, whatever the delicacy of travellers induces them to term them. Unfortunately the inquiries made into this system are very slight, affording us no statistics or results of any kind. We are thus left to judge of morality in Tajura by the fact that syphilis afflicts nearly the whole population, man and woman, sultan and beggar, priests and their wives included.

In the Christian kingdom of Shoa, the Christian king has one wife, and 500 concubines; seven in the palace, thirteen at different places in the outskirts, and the rest in various parts of his dominions. He makes a present to the parents of any women he may desire, and is usually well paid in return for the honour. The governors of cities and provinces follow this example, keeping establishments of concubines at different places. Scores of the royal slaves are cast aside, and their place supplied by others.

In Shoa there are two kinds of marriage; one a mere agreement to cohabitation, another a holy ceremony; the former is almost universally practised. The men and women declare before witnesses that they intend to live happily together. The connection thus easily contracted is easily broken; mutual consent only is necessary to a divorce. In Shoa a wife is valued according to the amount of her property. The heiress to a house, a field and a bedstead, is sure to have a husband. When they quarrel and part, a division of goods takes place. Holy ceremonies are very rare, and not much relished. A wedded couple, in one sense of the term, is a phenomenon. Instances of incontinence are frequent; while the caprice of the men leads them often to increase the number of their concubines. These are procured as well from the Christians as from the Mohammedans and Pagans; but the poor girls professing these religions are forced to a blind profession of Christianity. Favourite slaves and concubines hold the same position with married women; while illegitimate and legitimate children are treated by the law with no distinction. Three hundred of the king’s concubines are slaves, taken in war or purchased from dealers. They are guarded by fifty eunuchs, and live in seclusion; though this by no means prevents the court from overflowing with licentiousness. Numerous adulteries take place, and this example is followed by the people; among whom a chaste married couple is not common.

Women in Abyssinia, which is an agricultural country, mix freely with the men, and dance in their company; though a few jealous husbands or cautious parents seclude them. Morality is at an extremely low ebb. At the Christmas saturnalia, gross and disgusting scenes occur, as well as at other feasts. What else can be expected in a country where 12,000 priests live devoted, in theory at least, to celibacy; and where, at the annual baptisms, these priests, with men, women, and children strip naked, and rush in promiscuous crowds into a stream, where they are baptised according to the Christian religion! The sacerdotal class of Shoa is notoriously drunken and profligate. Another cause of corruption is the caprice which induces men to abandon their concubines after short cohabitation with them. These women, discarded and neglected, devote themselves to an infamous profession, and thus immorality is perpetuated through every grade of their society: in a word, the morals of Shoa are of the lowest description. In the Mohammedan states in its neighbourhood the condition of the sex is no better. If there is less general prostitution, it is because every woman is the slave of some man’s lust, and is imprisoned under his eye. He is jealous only of her person; scarcely attributing to her a single quality which is not perceptible to his senses[54].

In the southern provinces of Kordofan, under the government of Egypt, south of the Nubian Mountains, immense labour is imposed on the unmarried girls; yet the sentiment of love is not altogether unknown to them, and men fight duels with whips of hippopotamus hide on account of a disputed mistress. The wife is nevertheless a virtual slave, and still more degraded should she prove barren; the husband, in that case, solaces himself with a concubine, who, if she bears a child, is elevated to the rank of wife. It is common among the rich for a man to make his wife a separate allowance after the birth of her second child, when she goes to live in a separate hut. All their bloom is gone by the time they are twenty-four years old, and thenceforward they enjoy no estimation from the men. Yet, improvident in their hearts, the young girls of Kordofan are merry; and, whether at work or idle, spend the day in songs and laughter; while in the evening they assemble and dance to the music of the Tarabuka drum. Their demeanour, in general, is modest, and their lives are chaste. Married women, on the contrary, especially those who are neglected by their husbands, occupy themselves in gossip, and find solace in criminal intrigues. In some parts of the country, indeed, men consider it an honour for their wives to have intercourse with others; and the women are often forwarded in their advances. Female slaves often have liberty when they bear children to their proprietors.

Women eat when the men have done, and pretty dancers attend at the feasts to amuse their employers. These girls, like the Ghawazee of Lower Egypt, are usually prostitutes, and very skilful in the arts of seduction. Numbers of this class fled from Egypt into Kordofan, on one occasion, when Mohammed Ali, in one of his affected fits of morality, endeavoured to suppress their calling altogether.

Marriage, it may be scarcely necessary to say, is concluded without the woman’s consent. The man bargains for her, pays her price, takes her home, strips off her virginal girdle, which is the only garment of unmarried girls, and covers her with a cloth about her loins; a feast and a dance occasionally celebrate the event. When a wife is ill-treated beyond endurance, she demands a divorce; and, taking her female offspring, with her dowry, returns home. Trifles often produce these separations. That her husband has not allowed her sufficient pomatum to anoint her person with, is not unfrequently the ground of complaint. Few men in Kordofan have more than two wives; but most have concubines besides, whom the more opulent protect by a guard of eunuchs.

These remarks apply to the agricultural or fixed population. The Baghaira, or wandering pastoral tribes of Kordofan, are a modest, moral race--naked, but not on that account indecent[55].

A chief of the Berbers offered a late traveller the choice of his two daughters for a bedfellow. They were already both married. Women there, however, as well as in Dongola, are, many of them, ready to prostitute themselves for a present. A virgin, whether as wife or concubine, may be purchased for a horse. “Why do you not marry?” said a traveller to a young Berber. He pointed to a colt and answered “When that is a horse I shall marry.”[56]

The condition of women and state of manners on the upper borders of the Nile, we find described in Ferdinand Werne’s account of his recent voyage to discover the sources of the White Stream. The system in Khartum may be indicated by one sentence in the traveller’s own language. He speaks of desiring that the pay might be advanced to prevent starvation from visiting the soldiers’ families, “which, from the low price of female slaves, were numerous.” It may, without resort to hyperbole, be said, that the female monkeys peopling the neighbouring woods occupy a far nobler and more natural position. Among the barbarians on the banks of the river further up, the state of manners is in a great degree more pure. The Keks, for example, are described as leading a blameless life. The travellers saw no marriageable maidens or children, married women alone appearing. The most singular social economy prevails among them. The women live, during a considerable part of the year, in villages apart from the men, who possess only temporary huts. Their wives have regular substantial habitations, which are common to both sexes during the rainy season. A man dare not approach the “harem village,” except at the proper period, though some of the women occasionally creep into their husbands’ village. Polygamy is allowed, but only practised by the chiefs, since all the wives are bought, which renders the indulgence costly.

Among some of the tribes on the banks of the White Nile women will sell their children if they can do so with profit. Everywhere in that region the maidens mingle naked with the men, but appear by no means immodest. When married they wear an apron. All exhibit a sense of shame at exhibiting themselves unclothed before strangers. Beyond the Mountains of the Moon, however, Werne found people, among whom the unmarried men and women were separated. They were completely naked, but chaste and decent nevertheless. A heavy price was always asked for a girl, which prevented common polygamy, though their social code permitted it[57].

It must be evident that, in an inquiry like the present, a view of the manners and morals of Africa with regard to the female sex must be incomplete. In the first place, our information is very limited; in the second, we are confined for space--for otherwise these sketches could be extended to an indefinite extent. We have, however, taken observations in Southern, in Western, in Eastern, in Northern, and Central Africa. Kingdoms and communities, indeed, there are which we have not included in our description. Of these some wear features so similar to others we have noticed, that to particularise them is unnecessary in a general view. Of others, such as Egypt, Nubia, Barca, Tripoli, Algiers, and Morocco, we shall treat in a future division of the subject, because they are not included, by the character of their civilization, among the communities of which we have hitherto spoken. The reader will, we trust, have been enabled to form a fair idea of the average of morals among the savages and semi-savages of Africa. With modern barbarians, as with ancient states, tabular statistics are impossible: but from a description in general terms, we cannot always refuse to ground a confident opinion.

WOMEN IN AUSTRALIA.

In Australia we have a family of the human race still more uneducated, though not more barbarous, than that which inhabits the woods of the African continent. There is among them less approach to the arts of civilization, less ingenuity, less intelligence, but there is more simplicity. Their customs are not so brutal as those prevailing on the banks of the Joliba or the Senegal. Nevertheless they are true savages, and the condition of their women is consistent with all the other features of their irreclaimed state. Of the Australians, however, as of all races imperfectly known, there obtains in this country a vulgar idea drawn from the old accounts, which are little better than caricatures. They have been represented as a hideous race, scarcely elevated above the brute, blood-thirsty, destitute of human feeling, without any redeeming characteristics, and, moreover, incapable of civilization. Such a description is calculated only to mislead. The aborigines of Australia are certainly a low, barbarous, and even a brutal race, but the true picture of their manners, which form the expression of their character, is not without encouraging traits.

Considering the great extent of New Holland, it is surprising to find such an uniformity of character and customs, as we actually discover among its nations. The language, varied by dialects, the habits, social laws, and ideas of the people, are extremely similar, whether we visit them in that province called the Happy or in the districts around Port Essington. Consequently, though it occupy a large space on the map, this region will not require any very extended notice. An idea of the condition and morality of its women may be afforded by one general view, with reference to the various local peculiarities noticed by travellers.

The native inhabitants of Australia are generally nomadic. They dwell in temporary villages scattered over vast surfaces of country, and move from place to place, as the supply of provisions, spontaneously provided by the earth, is more or less abundant. Separated as they are into small isolated communities--rarely numbering more than eighty members--they resort to the borders of lakes and streams, which dry up at certain seasons, and force them to seek elsewhere a home. A rude copy of the patriarchal form of government prevails among them--old men being the rulers of the tribe.

The condition of women among these primitive savages is extremely low. They are servants of the stronger sex. In some of their dialects wife and slave are synonymous. All the labour devolves on her, and, as no form of agriculture is practised, this consists principally in the search for the means of life. She collects the daily food, she prepares the camp or the hut at night, she piles fire-wood, draws water, weaves baskets, carries all burdens, and bears the children on her back, and the return for all this willing devotion is frequently the grossest ill-usage.

There is no form of marriage ceremony observed. A man gets a wife in various ways. Sometimes she is betrothed to him while an infant--even before her birth, and sometimes she devolves to him with other property. The eldest surviving brother, or next male relative, inherits the women of a whole family. Thus many households are supplied. Others steal their wives from hostile tribes, and frequent wars arise from such proceedings. Polygamy is universally allowed, but not by any means generally practised; for there are few parts of Australia where the female sex is not outnumbered by the male. Plurality of wives consequently implies wealth and distinction--each additional one being regarded as a new slave, an increase of property. Nor are the women jealous of polygamy. When a man has many wives, they subdivide the labour, which otherwise would devolve on one, thus lightening each others’ burdens, and procuring companionship. There can indeed be little jealous feeling where affection on the part of the husband to the wife is almost a thing unknown.

The Australian wife when past the prime of life is usually a wretched object. She is often deformed and crippled by excessive toil--her body bent, her legs crooked, her ankles swollen, her face wearing an aspect of sullen apathy, produced by long hardship. When young, however, they are frequently lively and happy, not being cursed with keen feelings, and caring for little beyond the present hour. Should a young woman, nevertheless, be distinguished by peculiar beauty, she leads, while her attractions last, a miserable course of existence. Betrothed at an early age, she is perpetually watched by the future husband, and upon the least suspicion of infidelity is subjected to the most brutal treatment. To thrust a spear through her thigh or the calf of her leg is the common mode of punishment. She may, in spite of all precautions, be snatched away: whether consenting or not, she must endure the same penalty. If she be chaste, the man who has attempted to seduce her may strike her with a club, stun her, and bear her to a wood, where she is violated by force. Still she is punished, and it is, says Sir George Grey, no common sight to see a woman of superior elegance or beauty who has not some scars disfiguring various parts of her person. This period, however, is soon over, for the bloom of an Australian woman is very short-lived. When the seducer is found, he is punished in a similar manner, and if he have committed adultery with a married woman, suffers death.

The jealousy of the married men is excessive, and would be ridiculous were it not that their vigilance is absolutely called for. A careless husband would speedily suffer for his neglect. Accordingly we find the Australian savages practising in their woods or open plains restrictions not dissimilar to those adopted in the seraglios of the East. When an encampment is formed for the night every man overlooks his wives while they build one or more temporary huts, over which he then places himself as a guard. The young children and the unmarried girls occupy this portion of the village. Boys above ten years of age and all single men are forced to sleep in a separate encampment, constructed for them by their mothers, and are not allowed to visit the bivouacs of the married men. Under no circumstances is a strange native allowed to approach one of the family huts. Each of these little dwellings is placed far from the rest, so that when their inmates desire to hold converse they sing to each other from a distance. When the young men collect to dance, the maidens and wives are allowed to be spectators, but only on a few occasions to join. They have dances of their own, at which the youth of the other sex are not permitted to be present.

In spite of this excessive jealousy the idea of a husband’s affection for his wife appears strange to them. Men return from journeys without exchanging a greeting with the mothers of their children, but those children they salute with many endearing terms, falling on their necks and shedding tears with every demonstration of love. A man has been known, when his wife was grievously sick, to leave her to die in the wilderness, rather than be troubled with her on his journey.

Yet the influence of women is not by any means small. In some of the tribes they obtain a position of moderate equality with the husband, are well-fed, clothed, and treated as rational beings. Everywhere the men, young and old, strive to deserve their praise; and exhibitions of vanity take place, perfectly ludicrous to those European travellers who forget that the silly dandyism of the Australian savage, with his paint and opossum skin, is only peculiar in its form of expression. Women are often present on the field of battle, to inspire their husbands by exhortations, to rouse them by clamours of revenge or appeals to their valour; and among the chief punishments of cowardice is their contempt. The man failing in any great duty of a warrior is so disgraced. Thus, if he neglect to avenge the death of his nearest relation, his wives may quit him; the unmarried girls shun him with scorn, and he is driven by their reproaches to perform his bloody and dangerous task.

Where polygamy exists it is seldom the woman’s consent is required before her union with a suitor. In Australia it is never required or expected. The transaction is entirely between her father and the man who desires her for a wife, or, rather, for a concubine. She is ordered, perhaps, to take up her household bag, and go to a certain man’s hut, and this may be the first notice she has of the marriage. There she is in the position of a slave to her master. If she be obedient, toil without torture is her mitigated lot; but if she rebel, the club is employed to enforce submission. She is her husband’s absolute property. He may give her away, exchange her, or lend her as he pleases. Indeed, old men will sometimes offer their wives to friends, or as a mark of respect to strangers; and the offer is not uncommonly accepted.

Though we have mentioned three ways of obtaining a wife, the system of betrothal is the most general. Almost every female child is so disposed of a few days after its birth. From that moment the parents have no control whatever over her future settlement; she is in fact a bought slave. Should her betrothed die she becomes the property of his heir. Whatever her age she may be taken into the hut; cohabitation often commencing while the girl is not twelve years old, and her husband only a boy. Three days after her first husband’s death the widow goes to the hut of the second.

Some restrictions, however, are imposed on the intercourse of the sexes. Thus all children take the family name of their mother, and a man may not marry a woman of his own family name. Relations nearer than cousins are not allowed to marry, and an alliance even within this degree is very rare. The Australians have, indeed, a horror of all connections with the least stigma of incest upon them, and adjudge the punishment of death to such an offence. Their laws, which are matters not of enactment but of custom, are extremely severe upon this and all other points connected with their women.

Chastity, nevertheless, is neither highly appreciated nor often practised. It is far from being prized by the women as a jewel of value; on the contrary, they plot for opportunities to yield it illicitly, and can scarcely be said to know the idea. Profligacy is all but universal among them; it is a characteristic even of the children. When some schools were formed at Perth, for the education of the natives, it was found absolutely necessary to separate children of tender years, in order to prevent scenes of vile debauch from being enacted. It should be said, however, that though indiscriminate prostitution among the women, and depraved sensuality among the men, exist in the most savage communities, disease and vice are far less characteristic of them than of those tribes which have come in contact with Europeans. In all the colonial towns there is a class of native women following the calling of prostitutes, and there the venereal disease and syphilis are most deadly and widely prevalent. The former appears to have been brought from Europe, and makes terrible havoc among them. The latter, ascribed by their traditions to the East, has been found among tribes which had apparently never held intercourse with the whites; in such cases, however, it is in a milder form.

Several causes contribute to the corruption of manners among these savage tribes. One of the principal is, the monopoly of women claimed by the old men. The patriarchs of the tribe, contrive to secure all the young girls, leaving to their more youthful brethren only common prostitutes, prisoners of war, and such women as they can ravish from a neighbouring community, or seduce from their husbands’ dwellings. They also abandon to them their own wives when 30 or 40 years old, obtaining in exchange the little girls belonging to the young man’s family. The youthful warrior, therefore, with a number of sisters, can usually succeed in obtaining a few wives by barter. That their personal attractions are faded is not of any high importance; since they are needed chiefly to render him independent of labour. His sensual appetites he is content to gratify, until he becomes a patriarch, by illicit intrigues with other women of the tribe. Of these there are generally some ready to sell or give away their favours. The wives, especially of the very old chiefs, look anxiously forward to the death of their husbands, when they hope, in the usual course of inheritance, to be transferred to the hut of a younger man; for, among nations in this debased state, it is not the woman that is prized, but a woman. Personal attachment is rare. The husband whose wife has been ravished away by a warrior from a neighbouring tribe may be pacified by being presented with another companion. Even in Australia Felix, which is peopled by the most intelligent, industrious, and manly of the Australian race, the young man disappointed of a wife in his own tribe sets off to another, waylays some woman, asks her to elope with him, and, on her refusal, stuns her with his club, and drags her away in triumph. Marriage, indeed, appears too dignified a term to apply to this system of concubinage and servitude which in Australia goes under that name. Travellers have found in the far interior happy families of man and wife, roaming together, with common interests, and united by affection; but such instances are rare.

A large proportion of the young men in Australia can by no means obtain wives. This arises from the numerical disparity between the sexes, which is almost universal in that region, and is chiefly attributable to the practice of infanticide. Child-killing is indeed among the social institutions of that poor and barbarous race. Women have been known to kill and eat their offspring, and men to swing them by the legs and dash out their brains against a tree. The custom is becoming rare among those tribes in constant intercourse with Europeans, but that intercourse itself has caused much of the evil. Half-castes, or the offspring of native women by European fathers, are almost invariably sacrificed. They are held in dread by the people, who fear the growth of a mixed race which may one day conquer or destroy them. Females, also, are killed in great numbers. This class of infanticide is regulated by various circumstances in different communities. Among some tribes all the girls are destroyed until a boy is born; in others, the firstborn is exposed; in others, all above a certain number perish; but everywhere the custom prevails. One of two twins--a rare birth--is almost always killed. It may be ascribed to the miserably poor condition of the people, and the degraded state of the female sex; for in a region where the aborigines have not yet learned to till the soil, and where the means of life are scanty, there will always be an inducement to check the growth of numbers by infanticide; and where women have to perform all the labour, and follow their husbands in long marches or campaigns, ministering to every want they may experience, the trouble of nursing an infant is often saved at the cost of the infant’s life. Neglect also effects the same purpose.

The population, under these circumstances, has always been thin, and is apparently decreasing. Among 421 persons belonging to various tribes in Australia Felix, Eyre remarked that there were in the course of two years and a half only ten children reared. In other places one child to every six women was not an unusual average. This, however, is not all to be ascribed to infanticide. Many of the females abandon themselves so recklessly to vice that they lose all their natural powers, and become incapable of bearing offspring. Eyre found in other parts of Australia that the average of births was four to every woman. In New South Wales the proportion of women to men appears to be as two to three; while in the interior, Sturt calculated that female children outnumbered the male, while with adults the reverse was true. This indicates an awful spread of the practice of infanticide, which we cannot refuse to believe when we remember the facts which travellers of undeniable integrity have made known to us.

To suppose from this that in Australia the natural sentiments of humanity are unknown, would be extremely rash. On the contrary, we find very much that is beautiful in the character of its wild people, and are led to believe that civilization may go far towards elevating them from all their barbarous customs. Women are known to bear about their necks, as relics sacred to affection, the bones of their children, whom they have mourned for years with a pure and deep sorrow. Men have loved and respected their wives; maidens have prized and guarded their virtue; but it is too true that these are exceptions, and that the character and the condition of the female sex in Australia is that of debasement and immorality.

With respect to the prostitute class of the colonial towns, to which allusion has been made, it will be noticed in another part of this inquiry, when we examine into the manners of English and other settlers abroad.

Of prostitutes as a class among the natives themselves, it is impossible to speak separately; for prostitution of that kind implies some advance towards the forms of regular society, and little of this appears yet to be made in that region. From the sketch we have given, however, a general idea may be gained of the state of women and the estimation of virtue among a race second only to the lowest tribes of Africa in barbarity and degradation[58].

OF PROSTITUTION IN NEW ZEALAND.

In the New Zealand group we find a race considerably elevated above the other inhabitants of Australasia, with a species of native civilization--a system of art, industry, and manners. Perhaps the savage of New Holland is one of the most miserable, and the New Zealander one of the most elevated, barbarians in the world. By this we do not mean that he has made any progress in refinement, or been subdued by the amiable amenities of life; but he is quick, intelligent, apt to learn, swift to imitate, and docile in the school of civilization. The Maories, in their original state, are low and brutal; but they are easily raised from that condition. They have exhibited a capacity for the reception of knowledge, and a desire to adopt what they are taught to admire--which encourage strong hopes of their reclamation. Among them, however, vice was, until recently, almost universal, and at the present day it is so, with the exception of a few tribes brought directly under the influence of educated and moral European communities. The only class which has discarded the most systematic immorality is that which has reconciled itself to the Christian religion, or been persuaded to follow the manners of the white men. The unreclaimed tribes present a spectacle of licentiousness which distinguishes them even among barbarous nations.

They show, indeed, an advance in profligacy. Their immorality is upon a plan, and recognised in that unwritten social law which among barbarians remedies the want of a written code. It is not the beastly lust of the savage, who appears merely obedient to an animal instinct, against which there is no principle of morals or sentiment of decency to contend;--it is the appetite of the sensualist, deliberately gratified, and by means similar, in many respects, to those adopted among the lowest classes in Europe. We may, indeed, compare the Maori village, unsubjected to missionary influence, with some of the hamlets in our rural provinces, where moral education of every kind is equally an exile.

The New Zealanders have been divided into the descendants of two races, the one inferior to the other; and the Malay has been taken as the superior. Ethnologists may prove a difference between them, and trace it through their manners; but these distinctions of race are not sufficiently marked to require separate investigations. The social institutions of the islanders are very generally the same, with some unimportant variations among the several tribes. We are placed in this peculiar difficulty when inquiring into the manners of New Zealand--that they appear to have undergone considerable modification since, and in consequence of, the arrival of Europeans. The natives refer to this change themselves, and in some cases charge the whites with introducing various evils into their country. Undoubtedly this is as true of New Zealand as of every other portion of the globe whither men have carried from Christendom the vices as well as the advantages of civilization. But in speaking of European settlers, a broad distinction must be borne in mind. White is not more contrasted with black, than are the regular orderly colonies established under the authority of Great Britain with the irregular scattered settlements planted by whalers, runaway or released convicts, land speculators, and other adventurers before the formal hoisting of our flag. The influence of the one has been to enlighten and to elevate, of the other to debase and demoralize, the native population. Gambling, drinking, and prostitution were encouraged or introduced by the one, Christianity, order, and morality are spreading through the exertions of the other; and it is, therefore, unjust to confound them in one general panegyric or condemnation. Nor shall we include all the unrecognised settlements in this description. Many of the hardy whalers and others have taken to themselves Maori wives, who, sober, thrifty, and industrious, submit without complaining to rough usage and hard work, and are animated by a deep affection for their husbands. Contented with a calico gown and blanket, an occasional pipe of tobacco, and a very frugal life, they cost little to support, and appear for the most part not only willing but cheerful.

The female sex throughout New Zealand is not in such complete subjection to the male as in New Holland. With the right they have acquired the power to resist any unnatural encroachment upon their liberties, though still in a state of comparative bondage. They are influential in society, and whenever this is the case they enjoy, more or less, remission of oppression. We find them declaiming at public meetings of the people, and fiercely denouncing the warriors who may be dishonourably averse to war, or have behaved ignominiously in the field. By influencing their friends and relatives they often secure to themselves revenge for an injury, and thus security against the same in future. In various other ways their position is defended against utter abasement. They are not regarded merely as subservient to the lust and indolence of the male sex. When dead they are buried with ceremony according to the husband’s rank, and formal rites of mourning are observed for them. In public and in domestic affairs their opinions are consulted, and often their hands are obtained in marriage by the most humble supplication, or the most difficult course of persuasion, by the lover. All this is evidence of a higher state than that which is occupied by females either in Africa or New Holland.

Polygamy is permitted and practised by those who can afford it. In reality, however, the man has but one wife and a number of concubines, for though the second and third may be ceremoniously wedded to him, they are in subjection to the first, and his intercourse with them is frequently checked by her. She is paramount and all but supreme, though a man of determination will sometimes divorce his first wife to punish her contumelious behaviour to his second.

It is customary for a man to marry two or more sisters, the eldest being recognised as the chief or head of the family. They all eat with the men, accompanying them, as well as their lovers and relations, before marriage, on their war expeditions or to their feasts. Betrothal takes place at a very early age--often conditionally before birth. Thus two brothers or two friends will agree that if their first children prove respectively a boy and a girl, they shall be married. When it is not settled so early, it is arranged during infancy, or at least childhood--for a girl of sixteen without an accepted lover is regarded as having outlived her attractions and all chance of an alliance. The betrothal is usually the occasion of a great feast, where wishes for the good success and welfare of the young couple are proclaimed by a company of friends. Three varieties of marriage formality are observed--differing as the girl is wanted to fill the place of first, second, third, or fourth wife. The first is a regular ceremony, the second less formal, and the last, which is merely conventional, is when a slave is raised from servitude to the marital embrace. The highest is that in which the priest pronounces a benediction, and a hope, not a prayer, for the prosperity of the married couple. The rest, which is the most approved and common, is for the man to conduct his betrothed to his hut, and she is thenceforward mistress of the place. Unless she be divorced, no one can take away her power, and no inferior wife can divide it. When they have entered the dwelling a party of friends surround it, make an attack, force their way, strip the newly-married pair nearly naked, plunder all they can find, and retire. By taking a woman to his house a man makes her his wife, or virtually, except in the case of the first, his concubine. When he merely desires to cohabit with one, without being formally united to her, he visits her habitation.

Though polygamy or concubinage has been practised in New Zealand from immemorial time, jealousy still burns among the wives as fiercely as in any Christian country where the institution is forbidden by the social law. It is the cause of bitter domestic feuds. The household, with a plurality of women, is rarely at peace. It is universally known to what an extent the jealousy of the Dutch women in Batavia carried them when their husbands indulged in the practice--common in Dutch settlements--of keeping female slaves. They watched their opportunity, and when it occurred would carry a poor girl into the woods, strip her entirely naked, smear her person all over with honey, and leave her to be tortured by the attacks of insects and vermin. A similar spirit of ferocious jealousy is characteristic of the women in New Zealand. The inferior wives consequently lead a miserable life, subjected to the severest tyranny from the chief, who makes them her handmaids, and sometimes terrifies her husband from marital intercourse with them. She exposes them to perpetual danger by endeavouring to insinuate into his mind suspicions of their fidelity, and thus the household is rendered miserable. When a man takes a journey he is usually accompanied by one of his wives, or, if he goes alone, will bring one back with him. Hence arise bitter heart-burnings and quarrels. Occasionally they lead to the death of one among the disputants, and frequently to infanticide.

So furious are the passions of the women when their jealousy is excited against their younger rivals, that many of the chiefs in New Zealand fear to enjoy the privilege allowed them by their social law. When they resolve upon it, they often proceed with a caution very amusing to contemplate. More than one anecdote in illustration of this is related in the works of recent travellers. A man having a first wife of bad temper and faded beauty, whom he fears, nevertheless, to offend altogether, is attracted by some young girl of superior charms, and offers to take her home; she accepts, and the husband prepares to execute his design. It is often long before he acquires courage to inform his wife, and only by the most skilful mixture of persuasion, management, and threats, that she is ever brought to consent. Women captured in battle, however, may be made slaves, or taken at once to their captor’s bed. Thus raised from actual slavery, their condition is little improved. The tyranny of the chief wife is exercised to oppress, insult, and irritate them. Should one of them prove pregnant, her mistress--especially if herself barren--will often exert the most abominable arts to ensure her miscarriage, that the husband may be disappointed of his child, and the concubine of his favour which would thence accrue to her.

Divorces, according to the testimony of most writers, are not unfrequent in New Zealand. Among the ordinary causes are, mere decline of conjugal affection, barrenness in the wife, and a multiplication of concubines. A stepmother ill-treating the children, or a mother wantonly killing one of them, is liable to divorce. The latter is not an useless precaution, for jealous wives have been known in cold blood to murder an infant, merely to revenge themselves upon their husbands, or irritate them into divorce. A woman extravagantly squandering the common property, idling her time, playing the coquette, becoming suspected of infidelity, or refusing to admit a new wife into the house, is sometimes put away. This is effected by expelling her from the house. When it is she who seeks it, she flies to her relatives or friends. Should the husband be content with his loss, both are at liberty to marry; but if he desire to regain her, he seeks to coax her back, and, failing in that, employs force. She is compelled to submit unless her parents are powerful enough to defend her--for in New Zealand arms are the arbiters of law. When the desire to separate is mutual, it is effected by agreement, which is a complete release to both. If the husband insist on taking away the children, he may, but he is forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, from annoying his former wife any further.

There is among the New Zealanders a rite known as Tapu, and the person performing it is sacred against the touch of another. While in this condition no contact is allowed with any person or thing. There are, however, comparative forms of Tapu. Thus a woman, in the matter of sexual intercourse, is tapu to all but her husband, and adultery is severely punished. Formerly the irrevocable remedy was death, and this may still be inflicted; but jealousy is seldom strong in the New Zealand husband, who often contents himself with receiving a heavy fine from his enemy. The crime is always infamous, but not inexpiable. The husband occasionally, when his wife has been guilty, takes her out of the house, strips her, and exposes her entirely naked, then receiving her back with forgiveness. The paramour usually attempts to fly. If he be not put to death, he also is sometimes subjected to a similar disgrace. When a wife discovers any girl carrying on a secret and illicit connection with her husband, a favourite mode of revenge is, to strip and expose her in this manner. For, in New Zealand, libidinous as the conduct of the people may be, their outward behaviour is, on the whole, decorous. They indulge in few indecencies before a third person. The exposure of the person is one of the most terrible punishments which can be inflicted. A woman has hanged herself on its being said that she has been seen naked. One girl at Karawanga, on the river Thames, charged with this offence, was hung up by the heels and ignominiously flogged before all the tribe. Shame drove her mad, and she shot herself. They are otherwise obscene, and the children are adepts in indecency and immorality. One strong characteristic of their rude attempts at art is the obscenity in their paintings and carvings. In those singular specimens which crowd the rocks of Depuch Island, on the coast of New Holland, not a trace of this grossness is visible.

One of the most melancholy features in the manners of this barbarous race, is the prevalence of infanticide. The Christian converts, as well as some of the natives who hold frequent intercourse with the more respectable Europeans, have abandoned it, as well as polygamy; but, with these exceptions, it is general throughout the thinly-scattered population of New Zealand. It almost always takes place immediately after birth, before the sentiment of maternal affection grows strong in the mother’s breast. After keeping a child a little while they seldom, except under the influence of frenzy, destroy it. As they have said to travellers, they do not look on them, lest they should love them. The weakly or deformed are always slain. The victim is sometimes buried alive, sometimes killed by violent compression of its head. This practice has contributed greatly to keep the population down. It is openly and unblushingly pursued, the principal victims being the females. The chief reasons for it are usually--revenge in the woman against her husband’s neglect, poverty, dread of shame, and superstition. One of the most common causes is the wife’s belief that her husband cares no longer for his offspring. The priests, whose low cunning is as characteristic of the class in those islands as elsewhere, frequently demand a victim for an oblation of blood to the spirit of evil, and never fail to extort the sacrifice from some poor ignorant mother. Another injurious and unnatural practice is, that of checking or neutralizing the operations of nature by procuring abortion.

Tyrone Power, in his observations on the immorality prevalent in New Zealand, remarks that some of the young girls, betrothed from an early age, are tapu, and thus preserved chaste. He regrets that this superstition is not more influential, since it would check the system of almost universal and indiscriminate prostitution, which prevails among those not subject to this rite. Except when the woman is tapu, her profligacy is neither punished nor censured. Fathers, mothers, and brothers will, without a blush, give, sell, or lend on hire, the persons of their female relatives. The women themselves willingly acknowledge the bargain, and Mr. Power declares the most modest of them will succumb to a liberal offer of money. Nor is anything else to be expected, in any general degree. The children are educated to obscenity and vice. Their intercourse is scarcely restrained, and the early age at which it takes place has proved physically injurious to the race. Even those who are betrothed in infancy and rendered tapu to each other, commence cohabitation before they have emerged, according to English ideas, from childhood. Except in the case of those couples thus pledged before they can make a choice of their own, the laws which in New Zealand regulate the intercourse of the sexes with regard to preparations for marriage, approach in spirit to our own. A man desiring to take as wife a woman who is bound by no betrothment has to court her, and sometimes does so with supplication. The girls exhibit great coyness of manner, and are particular in hiding their faces from the stranger’s eye. When they bathe it is in a secluded spot; but they exercise all the arts which attract the opposite sex. When one or two suitors woo an independent woman, the choice is naturally given to the wealthiest; but should she decline to fix her preference on either, a desperate feud occurs, and she is won by force of arms. Sometimes a young girl is seized by two rivals, who pull on either side until her arms are loosened in the sockets, and one gives way.

Perhaps, under these circumstances, the system of betrothal is productive of useful results, since it prevents the feuds and conflicts which might otherwise spring from the rivalry of suitors. The girl thus bound must submit to marriage with the man, whatever may be her indifference or aversion to him. Occasionally, indeed, some more youthful, or otherwise attractive, lover gains her consent to an elopement. If caught, however, both of the culprits are severely whipped. Should the young suitor be of poor and mean condition, he runs the chance of being robbed and murdered for his audacity. When, on the contrary, a powerful chief is desirous of obtaining a maiden who is betrothed, he has little difficulty in effecting his object, for in New Zealand the liberty of the individual is proportionate to his strength. It is a feudal system, where the strong may evade the regulations of the social law, and the weak must submit. Justice, however, to the missionaries in those islands requires us to add, that in the districts where their influence is strong, a beneficial change in this, as in other respects, has been produced upon the people. They acknowledge more readily the supremacy of law; they prefer a judicial tribunal to the trial of arms; they restrain their animal passions in obedience to the moral code which has been exhibited to them; and many old polygamists have put away all their wives but one, contented to live faithfully with her.

Among the heathen population chastity is not viewed in the same light as with us. It not so much required from the woman as from the wife, from the young girl as from the betrothed maiden. In fact, it signifies little more than faithful conduct in marriage, not for the sake of honour or virtue, but for that of the husband. With such a social theory, we can expect no general refinement in morality. Indeed, the term is not translatable into the language of New Zealand. Modesty is a fashion, not a sentiment, with them. The woman who would retire from the stranger’s gaze may, previous to marriage or betrothal, intrigue with any man without incurring an infamous reputation. Prostitution is not only a common but a recognised thing. Men care little to receive virgins into their huts as wives. Husbands have boasted that their wives had been the concubines of Europeans; and one declared to Polack that he was married to a woman who had regularly followed the calling of a prostitute among the crews of ships in the harbour. This he mentioned with no inconsiderable pride, as a proof of the beauty of the prize he had carried away.

Formerly many of the chiefs dwelling on the coast were known to derive a part of their revenue from the prostitution of young females. It was, indeed, converted into a regular trade, and to a great extent with the European ships visiting the group. The handsomest and plumpest women in the villages were chosen, and bartered for certain sums of money or articles of merchandise, some for a longer, some for a shorter period. The practice is now, if not abolished, at least held in great reprobation, as the following anecdote will show. It exhibits the depraved manners of the people in a striking light, and is an illustration of that want of affection between married people which has been remarked as a characteristic of the New Zealanders. A chief from Wallatani, in the Bay of Plenty, went on an excursion to the Bay of Islands, and was accompanied by his wife and her sister. There he met a chief of the neighbourhood, who possessed some merchandise which he coveted. He at once offered to barter the chastity of his wife for the goods, and the proposal was accepted. The woman told her sister of the transaction, and she divulged the secret. So much reproach was brought upon the chief among his people, that he shot his wife’s sister to punish her incontinent tongue.

Jerningham Wakefield describes the arrival of the whalers in port. He mentions as one of the most important transactions following this event, the providing of the company with “wives for the season.” Some had their regular helpmates, but others were forced to hire women. Bargains were formally struck, and when a woman failed to give satisfaction, she was exchanged for another. She was at once the slave and the companion of her master. This is neither more nor less than a regular system of prostitution; but it is gradually going out of fashion, and is only carried on in a clandestine manner in the colonies properly so called. Indeed this is, unfortunately, one of the chief products of imperfect civilization--that vice, which before was open, is driven into the dark; it is not extirpated, but is concealed. A man offered his wife to the traveller Earl, and the woman was by no means loth to prostitute herself for a donation. Barbarians readily acquire the modes of vice practised by Europeans. In the criminal calendar of Wellington for 1846, we find one native convicted and punished for keeping a house of ill-fame.

Extraordinary as it may appear, prostitution in New Zealand has tended to cure one great evil. It has largely checked the practice of infanticide. For, as the female children were usually destroyed, it was on the supposition that, instead of being valuable, they would be burdensome to their parents. This continued to be the case until the discovery was made that by prostituting the young girls considerable profits might be made. It is to Europeans that the introduction of this idea is chiefly owing. The females were then, in many cases, carefully reared, and brought up to this dishonourable calling without reluctance. No difficulty was ever experienced from their resistance, as they would probably have become prostitutes of their own free will, had they not been directed to the occupation. Slavery, which has from the earliest time existed in New Zealand, has supplied the materials of prostitution, female servants being consigned to it. When possessed of any attractions they are almost invariably debauched by their masters, and frequently suffer nameless punishments from the jealous head wife. Concubinage does not, as in some other countries, release a woman from servitude, but she enjoys a privilege which is denied to the chief wife--she may marry again after her master’s death.

Formerly the general custom, however, was for a wife to hang, drown, strangle, or starve herself on the death of her husband. Her relatives often gave her a rope of flax, with which she retired to a neighbouring thicket and died. It was not a peremptory obligation, but custom viewed it as almost a sacred duty. Sometimes three of the wives destroyed themselves, but generally one victim sufficed. Self-immolation is now, indeed, becoming very rare; but it is still the practice for the widow, whether she loved her husband or not, to lament him with loud cries, and lacerate her flesh upon his tomb. Whenever she marries again a priest is consulted to predict whether she will survive the second husband or not. Occasionally we find instances of real attachment between man and wife, such as would sanctify any family hearth; while examples have occurred of women hanging themselves for sorrow, on the death of a betrothed lover.

These, however, are only indications that humanity is not in New Zealand universally debased below the brute condition. The general colour of the picture is dark. Women are degraded; men are profligate; virtue is unknown in its abstract sense; chastity is rare; and prostitution a characteristic of female society. Fathers, mothers, and brothers--usually the guardians of a young woman--prostitute her for gain, and the women themselves delight in this vice. There is, nevertheless, some amelioration observable in the manners of the people, produced by the influence of the English colonies. Those colonies themselves, however, are not free from the stain, as will be shown when we treat of communities of that description in general[59].

OF PROSTITUTION IN THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC.

Among the innumerable islands which are scattered over the surface of the Pacific, we discover various phases of manners developed under different influences. In some of the lonely groups lying out of the usual course of trade or travel, communities exist whose social habits remain entirely pure--that is, unchanged by intercourse with foreigners. In others continual communication through a long period, with white men, has wholly changed the characteristic aspects of the people--given them a new religion, a new moral code, new ideas of decency and virtue, new pleasures, and new modes of life. The same process appears likely, at a future day, to obliterate the ancient system of things. In all the islands of this class, indeed, the reform of manners is not so thorough as the florid accounts of the missionaries would induce us to believe; but those pioneers of civilization have done enough, without assuming more than their due, to deserve the praise of all Christendom. To have restrained the fiercest passions of human nature among ignorant and wilful savages; to have converted base libidinous heathens into decent Christians; to have checked the practice of polygamy; and in many places to have extinguished the crime of infanticide;--these are achievements which entitle the missionaries to the applause and respect of Europe; but it is no disparagement of their labours to show, where it is true, that immense things yet remain to be performed before the islanders of the Pacific are raised to the ordinary level of civilized humanity.

The main family of the Pacific--the Society, the Friendly, the Sandwich, the Navigators’, and the Marquesas Islands--present a state of society interesting and curious. Inhabiting one of the most beautiful regions on the face of the earth, with every natural advantage, the inhabitants of those groups were originally among the most degraded of mankind. Superior to the savage hordes of Africa and the wandering tribes of Australia, they are in physical and intellectual qualities inferior to the natives of New Zealand, though excelling them in simplicity and willingness to learn.

Tahiti may be considered the capital of Polynesia, as it is the head of its politics, trade, and general civilization. Before the settlement of the missionaries and the introduction of a new social scheme, its manners were barbarous and disgusting. The condition of the female sex corresponded to this order of things. It was humiliated to the last degree. Most of the men, by a sacred rite, were rendered too holy for any intercourse with the women except such as was pleasant to their own lusts. It was similar to the tapu of the New Zealanders, but was not, as among them, common to all. It was an exclusive privilege of the males. In consequence of this, women lived in a condition of exile from all the pleasures of life. They never sat at meals with their husbands, dared not eat the flesh of pigs, of fowls, of certain fish, or touch the utensils used by the men. They never entered the houses of their “tabooed” lords, dwelling in separate habitations, which these might enter when they chose. Those of the royal blood, however, were excepted from the action of this law. They might mingle with the other sex, might inherit the throne, and enjoy the advantages of society. With almost all others, beggary, toil, and degradation was the universal lot.

Marriage under such circumstances could not be looked upon as a sacred tie, or even a dignified state. It was held to serve only the purposes of nature and the pleasures of the men. With all, indeed, except the rich, it was a mere unceremonious bargain, in which the woman was purchased, though the parents usually made a present to their son-in-law. Among the nobler orders of society there was a little more parade, though an equal absence of sanctity. A person with a beautiful daughter brought her to some chief, saying, “Here is a wife for you.” If she pleased him he took her from her father’s hands, placed her under the care of a confidential servant, and had her fattened, until old and plump enough for marriage. All her friends assembled with his at the temple, and proceeded to the altar. The bride, with a rope hanging about her neck, was accompanied by a man bearing a bunch of the fragrant fern. Prayers were muttered, and blessing invoked upon the union. Then the names of their ancestors were whispered, and at each one of the leaves was torn. The nearest kinsman of the woman next loosened the rope from about her neck, and delivered her over to the bridegroom, bidding him take her home. Presents of various kinds were made to the newly-married pair, but, with all this ceremony, the tie was merely one of convenience. Within a month the man might tire of his partner and wish to be rid of her. All he had to do was to desire her departure, saying, “It is enough--go away.” She immediately left him, and almost invariably became a prostitute. This process might be repeated as often as he pleased. The caprice of the male sex thus threw numbers of the females into a necessity of supporting themselves by the public hire of their persons. For, although polygamy existed, it was practised only by the rich, since the facility of divorce rendered it more convenient to take one wife, dwell with her a short time, and abandon her for another, than to be troubled or burdened with several at the same time. The wealthy, however, took numerous concubines--indulging in this luxury more than any of the other islanders. In all their customs and national characteristics, if we desire to view them in their original form, we must contemplate the people of those islands as they were twenty years ago. A great change is now apparent among them. The accounts, therefore, published at that period, though improved by later inquiries, afford us the information we are in search of. We are not surprised to find an indolent licentious people, as they were, when under no restraint, addicted to the most odious forms of vice. One natural result of their manner of life was infanticide. It was practised to a frightful extent, and was encouraged by a variety of causes. In the first place, poverty and idleness often induced parents to destroy their children--choosing to suffer that short pang of natural sorrow than the long struggles with starvation which awaited the indigent--even in those prolific islands. Next the common licentiousness produced innumerable bastards, which were generally killed. Thirdly, the social institutions of the country, with the division of classes, contributed to increase the prevalence of the custom--for the fruit of all unequal matches was cast aside. Superstition also aided it, for the priests demanded for their gods frequent oblations of infant blood. The missionary Williams was informed that, from the constant occurrence of wars, women, being abandoned by their husbands, slew their children, whom they knew not how to support. When a man married a girl of inferior rank, two, four, or six of her children were sacrificed before she could claim equality with him, and should she bear any more they were spared. Vanity, too, exercised its influence, for, as nursing impaired the beauty of the women, they sought to preserve their attractions by sparing themselves the labour. Perhaps, however, we should not lay it to the charge of vanity. The miserable women of these islands found in the flower of their persons the only chance of attachment or respect from their husbands. When this had faded, nothing could save them from neglect.

Whatever the cause, the extent of the practice was fearful. Three-fourths of the children were destroyed, and sometimes in the most atrocious manner. A wet cloth placed on the infant’s mouth, the hands clenched round its throat, or the earth heaped over it while alive in a grave, were among the most humane. Others broke the infant’s joints, one by one, until it expired. This was usually the plan of the professional child-killers, of whom there was a class--male and female--though the parents often performed the office themselves. Before the establishment of Christianity, Williams declares he never conversed with a woman who had not destroyed one or two of her offspring. Many confessed to him, as well as to Wilmer, that they had killed, some three, some five, some nine, and one seventeen.

Connected with infanticide was one of the most extraordinary institutions ever established in a savage or a civilized country. This was the Areoi Society. It was at once the source of their greatest amusements and their greatest sorrow, and was strictly confined to the Society group, though indications of a similar thing have been discovered in the Ladrones. The delicacy of the missionary writers--in many instances extremely absurd--has induced them to neglect informing us in detail of the practices and regulations adopted by this society; but enough is known from them, and from less timid narrators, to allow of a tolerably full sketch.

From the traditions of the people it appears that the society was of very ancient date: they said there had been Areois as long as there had been men. Its origin is traced to two heroes--brothers, who, in consequence of some adventures with the gods, were deified, and made kings of the Areoi, which included all who would adhere to them as their lords in heaven. Living in celibacy themselves, they did not enjoin the same on their followers; but required that they should leave no descendants. Thus the great law of the Areois was that all their children should be slain. What the real origin of the institution was it is impossible to discover. This legend, however, indicates a part of its nature.

The Areois formed a body of privileged libertines, who spent their days travelling from province to province, from island to island, exhibiting a kind of licentious dramatic spectacle to the people, and everywhere indulging the grossest of their passions. The company located itself in a particular spot as its head-quarters, and at certain seasons departed on an excursion through the group. Great parade was made on the occasion of their setting out. They bore with them portable temples for the worship of their tutelar gods, and, wherever they halted, performed their pantomimes for the amusement of the people. The priests and others--all classes and things--were ridiculed by them in their speeches, with entire impunity, and they were entertained by the chiefs with sumptuous feasts. There were, however, seven classes of the Areois, of which the first was select and small, while the seventh performed the lower and more laborious parts in their entertainments. Numbers of servants followed them to prepare their food and their dresses, and were distinguished by the name of Fanannan; these were not obliged to destroy their children.

Every Areoi had his own wife, who was sacred from attack. Improper conduct towards her was severely punished, sometimes by death. Towards the wives of other persons, however, no respect was shown; for after one of their vile and obscene spectacles, the members of the fraternity would rush abroad, and commit every kind of excess among the humble people. At their grand feasts, to which the privileged orders only were admitted, numbers of handsome girls were introduced, who prostituted themselves for small gifts to any member of the association.

The practice of destroying all their children, which was compulsory among the Areois, licensed them to every kind of excess. The moment a child was born its life was extinguished--either strangled, stabbed with a sharp bamboo, or crushed under the foot. The professional executioner waited by the woman’s couch, and, immediately the infant came into the world, seized it, hurried it away, and in an instant flung it dead into some neighbouring thicket, or a pit prepared beforehand.

Infanticide was by no means confined to the Areois; it was an universal practice. Generally the sacrifice took place immediately after the birth; for, with the exception of those children demanded by the priests to offer in the temple, it was seldom that an infant allowed to live half an hour was destroyed. Whenever the execution was performed, it was previously resolved upon. The females were killed oftener than the males, and thus sprang up a great disproportion between the sexes, which was evidently owing to this and their often unnatural customs, as, since their abolition, the sexes are nearly equal.

Adultery was sometimes punished with death, but not under the public law. It was optional with the husband to pursue the criminal, or content himself with procuring another wife. A strange state of manners is exhibited by the account we have of the early missionaries arriving in Tahiti. The King Pomare came down to meet them with his wife Idia. This woman, though married to the prince, remaining on friendly terms with him, offering him advice, and influencing his actions by her counsel, was then cohabiting with one of her own servants, who had for some time been her paramour. The King, meanwhile, had taken his wife’s youngest sister as a concubine; but she had deserted him for a more youthful lover, whereupon he contented himself with a girl belonging to the poorer class. Women, indeed, and men of the royal blood, were above the law.

Abandoned wives, and girls who could find no husbands, usually became prostitutes, as distinguished from those who pursued a profligate life from sheer sensuality. They hired themselves out to the young men whom the monopoly of women by the rich constrained to be contented with such companions. We have no information whether they were subject to any especial regulations; what the terms of contract were between them and their temporary cohabitants; how they supported themselves in old age; or, indeed, of anything concerning them, except the general nature of their calling. A large class of these prostitutes dwelt near the ports and anchoring grounds, deriving their means of subsistence from open or clandestine intercourse with the sailors, who willingly paid them with little articles of ornament or utility from Europe.

One of the missionaries of the first company desired to marry a Tahiti woman. His brethren, however, strongly objected to the act; first, because she was a heathen, second, because she was a prostitute. There could not be then found on the island, as they declared themselves on belief, a single undebauched girl above twelve years of age; therefore, in accordance with the Scripture prohibition against marrying a “heathen harlot,” they forbade him forming the connection. Nevertheless he persisted, took the prostitute as wife, and is supposed to have been murdered with her connivance.

Inconstancy among wives, and profligacy among unmarried women, was then a characteristic almost universal in Tahiti. The wide-spread practice of procuring abortion concealed many of the intrigues which took place, and the last crime which began visibly to decrease was that of adultery. Nor could this be a matter of wonder. The education of the people was in a school of licentiousness. The most effective lessons in obscenity were afforded by the priests in the temples, and children of tender years indulged in acts of indescribable depravity. Thus in few parts of the world could be discovered a more corrupt system of manners, a more complete absence of morals, than in Tahiti.

Under the influence of the missionaries a great and beneficial change was produced. French priests have now in a measure superseded them; but even their exertions have not been able to neutralize the good effects of the new code of morals introduced by the English friends of civilization.

As to the actual amount, however, of the good which has been effected, the accounts are contradictory. From the missionaries themselves we learn that Christianity has been firmly established; that the female sex has been elevated to an honourable position; that the Christian rite of marriage is now generally observed; that infanticide is wholly abolished; and that the manners of the people have become comparatively pure. The picture, indeed, drawn by these artists, is vivid and full of charms. We cannot, however, accept it without reserve; for such writers have in many parts of the world been too eager to ring their peals of triumph over the appearance of reform, without inquiring into its substantial and durable nature.

Other accounts insist on the truth of a totally different view. A recent author, a merchant, many years resident in Tahiti, describes the result of missionary labour as a mere skinning over of the corruption which exists. “Even now,” he says, speaking of that island, “a people more ready to abandon themselves to sensuality cannot be found under the canopy of heaven.” And further, in noticing the state of the youthful population, he asserts, “It is a rare thing for a woman to preserve her chastity until the age of puberty.” Delicacy, he proceeds to tell us, is a thing unknown. There is hardly a man who would not wink at his wife’s prostitution, or even abet it, to support himself. The same system of corrupt manners is general throughout the islands. The missionaries, by making adultery and fornication offences punishable by fines--so many dollars each--have set up a species of licence for immorality. The penalty is either eluded or laughed at. Sometimes the woman’s paramour pays the penalty, and continues with her. The morals of the people, therefore, have not been radically reformed. Public decency is observed, but private manners are disgusting. The Tahitians have thus learned hypocrisy, for they now practise secretly what was formerly a recognised custom. The men are jealous of their own race, but will bargain for their wives with Europeans. One was asked the reason of this distinction. He instantly made answer, that when a white man took one of their wives he made her a present, passed on his way, and thought no more of her; but it was very different with their own people, for they would be continually hovering about the woman. The legal penalty for adultery by a single man is a fine of ten hogs to the husband. If it is committed by a married man he pays the ten hogs, while his paramour pays his wife another ten to compensate her for the injury she has suffered; thus the bargain is equal. Divorce is optional on either hand. For prostitution, or fornication of any kind, the missionaries enacted a fine. In a climate, however, where the girl ripens into puberty at the age of eight or nine, this becomes a licence, and immorality is very slightly checked. The depopulation of the group, which is still going on, is mainly owing, says the same author, to physical privations acting on moral depravity; for indigence is the lot of the people, and licentiousness now, as formerly, their besetting sin.

We believe this to be an unfair account of the state of things now existing in Tahiti. The writer[60] is possessed of a strong prejudice against the missionaries, and we are inclined to apply to him, with some modification, the observations of Commodore Wilkes, commander of the recent American exploring expedition in reference to that island. He tells us there is a class of traders who defame the missionaries, as well as a profligate class who hate them, because they forbid intoxicating liquors, have abolished lascivious dances, and prevent women going on board ship to prostitute themselves. One charge against the missionaries is, however, proved: they are guilty of a misjudging zeal amounting to fanaticism, forbidding the women to wear chaplets of flowers, because it is a sinful vanity; such a restriction is worse than ridiculous. The Commodore, however, whom we accept as a judicious and a trustworthy authority, already shows that much good has been effected. The population is now almost stationary--the births and deaths among all ages and both sexes were in 1839 naturally proportionate; Christian marriage is established as the national custom, and polygamy abolished; if infanticide be ever practised, it is as a secret crime; and as for immorality, though by no means extirpated, it has been considerably reduced. “Licentiousness,” says Wilkes, “does still exist among them, but the foreign residents and visitors are in a great degree the cause of its continuance, and an unbridled intercourse with them serves to perpetuate it. Severe laws have been enacted, but they cannot be put in force in cases where one of the parties is a foreigner.” He proceeds to deny that the island is conspicuous in this respect, and believes it would show advantageously in contrast with many countries usually styled civilized.

In the distant Sandwich group a similar system of manners existed before the abolition of idolatry in 1819. There was, however, one singular custom: children bore the rank of their mother, not their father, probably from the reason assigned by other savage races for different laws, that the parentage was never certain. Polygamy was practised, but if the king had a daughter by a noble wife she succeeded to the throne, though he should have numerous sons by the others; in fact, they were no more than concubines, though their offspring were not invariably destroyed, unless the mothers belonged to the humbler class of people; all the king’s illegitimate children, however, were immediately killed. Adultery was punished with death; but intrigues were frequent, and infanticide was practised to a terrible extent. Since the enactment of the laws restraining sexual intercourse, the crime has become comparatively rare, and the progress of depopulation has been arrested.

We must, however, first view the people as they were before these reforms occurred: there was little check upon the intercourse of the sexes, except with regard to married women; the young girls being abandoned almost entirely to a dissolute mode of life, the marriage contract was a loose tie, easily broken, without anything of a sacred or even honourable character. Husbands continually abandoned their wives, who invariably destroyed the children thus left to them in their virtual widowhood, and took to prostitution as a means of life. The practice of procuring abortion was also resorted to, even more than infanticide, and women were sometimes killed by the operation; nevertheless, bastard children are sometimes reared, and the language of the islanders supplies a delicate designation for one of this brood: it is called “one that comes.”

Although the condition of the female sex was degraded, and although the women were for the most part subjected to the will of the chiefs, a few remained to be wedded among the poor, and to follow their own inclinations in the choice of partners. The word “courting” is used among them, or at least a synonymous term, signifying, literally, “we must be crept to.” This indicates some elevation in their social intercourse, but appears to have been a recent introduction. When a man wished to marry a girl, some previous intimacy was supposed. According to their former customs he goes to her, and offers her a present. If she was willing to receive him, the gift was accepted; if not, he went his way. The parents were then consulted. When they consented he at once took home his bride, and all was consummated. When they refused he either abandoned his suit or persuaded his lover to elope with him; or, if possessed of sufficient property and power, forces her away. When once settled in union the wives were usually faithful, though previously they indulged in the utmost profligacy without any check.

The infanticide of the Sandwich Islands presented details still more horrible than the worst of those described in connection with Tahiti. Children six or seven years old, who so far had been carefully nursed, were sometimes sacrificed when their parents became desperate or indolent. An American traveller relates an affecting incident of a man who desired to be rid of his child, while the mother endeavoured to save it. Long altercations took place between them, until the father one day, to put an end to the debate, seized his little son, threw him over his knees, and with a single blow broke his back. The circumstance was related to the king, with a demand for punishment upon the offender. “Whose child was it?” he asked. They answered, “His own.” “Then that is nothing,” he said, “to you or to me.” Usually the office was performed by female child-stranglers, who made it their profession. In a country where marriage, especially among the rich, was simply a compact for temporary or permanent cohabitation, abundance of employment was naturally afforded to those people. The chiefs, it is true, married in the temple, but the addition of ceremonies added not a whit of sanctity or durability to the bond. The first Christian wedding took place in Oalm in 1822, and the rite has since that period been established by law. The edict of 1819, indeed, proclaimed a revolution in the social system of the group. But it is not easy to reform the manners of a whole people. It is a slight task to publish laws, but difficult to enforce them, especially when they assail the most deeply-rooted prejudices, the sentiments, the passions, the religions, and the pleasures, of a numerous community. Idolatry, infanticide, polygamy, concubinage, and prostitution were all prohibited by the declaration of 1819, but are still practised, though in secret, but by no means so extensively as in former times. The financial laws check infanticide. If a man has four children, he is exempt from labour taxes to the king and to his landlord; if five, from the poll-tax also; if six, from all taxes whatsoever. Indeed, the condition of the females has been considerably raised, so that, instead of being the slaves, they are now, at least in some degree, the companions of the men.

Of the actual state of the sex, and the characteristic of manners in the Sandwich group, a fair sketch may be gathered from the facts scattered through the large work of Commodore Wilkes; he went through many districts, and examined minutely the progress of the people under the new code. In one district of Dahu, a small island in the group, no instance of infanticide had occurred (1840) during ten years; the law against the illicit intercourse of the sexes had not tended to increase the practice, and the population, which had been almost swept away, was recovering. In the valley of Halalea the population had been decreasing at the rate of one per cent. for nine years. In 1837, it was 3024--1609 males, 1415 females; and in 1840, 2935--1563 males, 1372 females. The general licentiousness of manners, causing barrenness in the women, with the practice of infanticide and abortion, prevented any increase. In Waiaulea the population of 2640 decreased by 225 in four years; and instances were known of women having six, seven, or even ten children, in as many years, without rearing one of them; the bastards were almost always destroyed, but the new law operated very beneficially to check the intercourse of the sexes; and only one case was known of a woman destroying her child, through fear of the penalty attaching to fornication. It appears probable, however, that the regulation compelling all unmarried women, found pregnant, to work on the public roads, must encourage many unnatural practices; in Hawaii itself, the principal island, where large numbers of men and women formerly lived in promiscuous intercourse--as one woman common to several men--great improvement is visible, and public manners have undergone much change; licentiousness, notwithstanding, is still a prominent characteristic of the people. These observations may be applied generally to the whole of the Sandwich group.

Of the Tonga or Friendly Islands no description equals in completeness, and none exceeds in general accuracy, that by Mariner, compiled by John Martin. According to him, the female sex was not degraded there, old persons of both sexes being entitled to equal reverence; women in particular were respected as such, considered to form part of the world’s means of happiness, and protected by that law of manly honour which prohibits the strong from maltreating the weak. There were many regulations respecting rank which do not belong to this inquiry; but others of the same kind must be alluded to. The young girl, betrothed or set apart to be the wife or concubine of a noble, acquired on that account a certain position in the community. The rich women occupied themselves with various forms of elegant industry, not as professions, but accomplishments; while others made a trade of it.

The chastity of the Tonga people should be measured, in Mr. Martin’s opinion, rather by their own than by others’ ideas of that virtue. Among them it was held the positive duty of a married woman to be faithful to her husband. By married woman was meant one who cohabited with a man, lived under his roof and protection, and ruled an establishment of his. Her marriage was frequently independent of her own will, she being betrothed by her parents, while very young, to some chief or other person. About a third were thus disposed of, the rest marrying by their own consent. She must remain with her husband whether she pleased or not, until he chose to divorce her.

About two-thirds of the females were married, and of these about half continued with their husbands until death; that is, about a third remained married till either they or their partners died. Of the others two-thirds were married, and were soon divorced, marrying again two, three, or four times; a few never contracted any marriage at all; and a third were generally unmarried. Girls below puberty were not taken into this account.

During Mariner’s residence of four years in the islands, where he enjoyed privileges of social intercourse which no native was allowed, he made numerous inquiries, and was led to believe that infidelity among the married women was very rare. He remembered only three successful instances of planned intrigue, with one other which he suspected. Great chiefs might kill their wives taken in adultery, while inferior men beat them. They were under the surveillance of female servants, who continually watched their proceedings. Independently of this also, he considered them inclined to conjugal virtue.

A man desiring to divorce his wife, had to do no more than bid her go, when she became perfect mistress of herself, and often married again in a few days. Others remained single, admitting a man into their houses occasionally, or lived as the mistress of various men from time to time--that is to say, became wandering libertines or prostitutes. Unmarried women might have intercourse with whom they pleased without opprobrium, but they were not easily won. Gross prostitution was unknown among them. The conduct of the men was very different. It was thought no reproach, as a married man, to hold intercourse with other females; but the practice was not general. It was checked by the jealousy of the wife. Single men were extremely free in their conduct; but seldom made attempts on married women. Rape occasionally happened. Captives taken in war had, as a thing of course, to submit, and incurred no dishonour through it. Few of the young men would refuse to seduce an unmarried girl of their own nation, had they the opportunity. Nevertheless, in comparison with the islanders in the surrounding sea, they were rather a chaste than a libertine people.

Commodore Wilkes declares himself glad to confirm the account in “Mariner’s Tonga Islands” as an “admirable and accurate description.” The women are said to be virtuous, and the general state of morals superior far to that of Tahiti. The venereal disease is much less extensively prevalent.

In the Marquesas the curious social phenomenon of polyandrism exists--several men cohabiting with one woman. This is in consequence of the preponderance of the male over the female sex. A young girl may become attached to a youth, and live with him for a short time. A man may then become attached to her, and transfer her, with her lover, to his house, where he supports them both. Infanticide is unknown, but procuring abortion not uncommon. The marriage tie, though a mere private compact signified by an exchange of presents, is, in spite of polyandrism, distinct, binding, and enduring--the parties abiding by the agreement they have made, until another formal agreement to dissolve it. In other parts of the Pacific the contrary system is carried out to an extravagant extent. In the Isle of Rotumah the land is divided into various estates, the property of certain chiefs. Each of these lords of the soil has absolute control over all the women in his district, and not one can marry without his consent. Should he not desire her for himself he allows her to contract the engagement, on receiving a present from the bridegroom. Gifts are exchanged on either side, bowls of cava are drunk, and the ceremony is over. The wife, in this island, has singular power. She may, a few days after the marriage, desire her husband to leave her. He does so for three or four months, and then returns to spend two or three days in her society. She may then request him again to quit the house; and this is repeated until she consents to live with him permanently. Occasionally, when all the preliminaries of the match are arranged, the girl will suddenly revoke her resolution, and refuse to leave her parents’ house. The man may be equally desirous of leaving her at home, and in this case she is henceforward a privileged libertine, and usually lives well upon the gains of prostitution. But if, previously to the contract, she lose her virginity, the punishment is death, which is also inflicted for adultery.

A similar system with respect to the chief’s authority prevails in the Feejee group. All the young girls in his district are at his mercy; he may take them all as concubines if he pleases. When they are allowed to marry they become slaves, living in complete subjection to their husbands, who flog them at will. They are denied the privilege of entering a temple, and are bought, sold, and exchanged, like cattle. Inclined as they are to licentiousness, they have certain ideas of modesty, and wear a girdle round the loins; any girl seen without this covering is put to death.

In the wild isles of the Kingsmill group in the Western Pacific, polygamy prevails; but more consideration is paid to the female sex than in any other part of that great insular region. All the hard labour is performed by the men; the women pursuing only those occupations which are truly domestic and feminine. Men, indeed, beat their wives, but in a similar manner to the lower classes here. If she be vigorous or bold enough, she returns blow for blow, and there is no appeal for him against her retaliation. Chastity is scarcely esteemed a virtue, nor is it considered essential by a man requiring a wife. After marriage, however, continence is strictly required. The adulteress is either put to death or expelled; but, in spite of these punishments, offences of this class are not uncommon. They are encouraged by the laws which forbid the younger brothers of a chief, who are not holders of land, from marriage; for it may be laid down as an axiom that all restrictions upon lawful intercourse with women multiply illicit connections. The adulteress and the prostitute in the Kingsmill Isles, as elsewhere, form the resources of those to whom celibacy is enjoined.

A wife is not bought, but the parents of both contribute to the household stock of the newly-married pair. It would be indecent in the young man to inquire of the girl’s father what is the amount of her dowry. The marriage ceremony is only a feast, which is continued during three days. Children are sometimes betrothed during infancy, and in this case no marriage ceremony is required: as soon as they are sufficiently old they are sent to live together. When this is not the case, the young man makes an offer first to the girl, and, if accepted, next to her parents; but usually carries her off if they do not consent.

On the neighbouring isle of Maluni all the women who are married have been betrothed during childhood; the rest, without exception, being prostitutes, living with the single men, and receiving payment from them.

This is, as usual, in consequence of the rich men having so many wives that only a few women are left to live in common with the poorer sort. Infanticide is not practised, but abortion is continually procured. A woman has seldom more than two, and never more than three children. After the third is born she invariably calls in the aid of a woman to prevent another birth. This is not attended with any shame, but is, on the contrary, considered prudent; with the unmarried females it is invariable.

In the Samoan or Navigators’ group women now enjoy equal privileges with the men, and no indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes is permitted. Polygamy has been very much checked, but is generally regretted. The people say, with a simplicity which takes away its profanity from the expression, “Why should God be so unreasonable as to require them to give up all their wives for his convenience?” Among the unconverted tribes it still prevails as formerly. Girls are betrothed early, and tabooed until marriage, which preserves the general chastity. Infanticide never occurs. Adultery is severely punished, and seldom committed; the marriage ceremony is only a trifling form of exchanging presents. The power of divorce may be exercised by the husband under certain circumstances, but not by the wife. Altogether their morals are of a superior order; and their libertine disposition exercises itself chiefly in the performance of lascivious dances. Everywhere, however, in these seas, except where the power of the missionaries is supreme, the whaling ships, on arriving at a port, attract numbers of prostitutes, who offer themselves to the sailors at various prices. When Coulter made his voyage, not many years ago, the vessel was assailed at the Kingsmill Islands by dozens of these women, who came, some attended by their fathers, mothers, or brothers, to entice the sailors. Some of them were very beautiful, and nearly naked. When he was in bed, in a house on shore, several young girls came in with scarcely any clothing, and asked him to choose a companion, or “wife.” In other places hundreds of prostitutes swarmed down to the beach, performing the most obscene antics. It was so when La Perouse visited the region; it is so now. It was remarked by Cook, and it was remarked by the most recent voyager.

To pass up and down through that prodigious wilderness of sea, visiting each group in succession, and noticing the peculiar manners of all the various insular communities which there exist, would exceed the limits of an ordinary work. Nor would it continue to interest the reader; for there is an unavoidable monotony in the subject, when extended too greatly in reference to one region. What we have described will show that, among the innumerable islands of the Pacific, the original condition of women, before the partial establishment of Christianity, was pitifully degraded, and that the labours of the missionaries have been fruitful in good results. Wherever Christianity has been received, much outward improvement, at least, is visible. And there is something in this. When crime is perpetrated in secret, it is so because it is dangerous or disgraceful; and in proportion as it is either the one or the other the inducement to it will diminish. There is an immense field open in the Pacific; but the exertions of future missionaries may be encouraged by contemplating the good results which have sprung from the labours of those who have gone before them[61].

OF PROSTITUTION AMONG THE NORTH-AMERICAN INDIANS.

Various as are the phases of civilization in different parts of the earth, no race is more peculiar than the North American Indian. It is alone. It stands apart from the rest of the human family. It resembles no other. In manners, customs, laws, ideas, and religion, the nation occupies its own ground, related by no tie with any of the innumerable tribes of the human family inhabiting the remaining divisions of the world. It has, indeed, exercised the ingenuity of ethnographical philosophers to trace among the North American Indians an identity of social institutions with the people of ancient Israel; but the comparison appears forced except in a few particulars, which seem rather matters of accident, and by no means the prominent characteristics of the Red or the Jewish race.

Until the complete establishment of a civilized society in North America, and before the settlement of peace, our knowledge of the Indian race was most imperfect. We depended on the relations of certain imaginative travellers, who wrote not so much to inform as to startle the reader--a practice not altogether abandoned at the present day. Carver, indeed, with a few others, brought home honest accounts of what he saw, but was not always careful to separate that from what he heard; and thus, even his picture is strangely coloured in some of its details. Later and more scrupulous travellers, however, have investigated the manners of the Indian race, and our acquaintance with it is gradually becoming familiar. Catlin and the various historians have added to our knowledge; so that a clear outline, at least of their social institutions, may be drawn. There are three classes of writers on the subject:--those who paint the red man as poetry incarnate; those who describe him as a vile and drunken barbarian; and those who have the sense to discriminate between the Indian of the seaport town corrupted in the dram-shop, and the Indian of the woods, displaying the original characteristics of his race. It is from such authorities we shall draw our view of the condition of women and the state of morals among them.

A race divided into several nations, and subdivided into innumerable tribes, might be supposed to present a similar diversity of manners. Not so, however. The social institutions of the North-American Indian are generally uniform, though of course there are many varieties of detail in their habits and customs. Yet these are neither so numerous nor so striking as to render it impossible to sketch the whole in a general view.

The Indian loves society. He is never found wandering alone. He is attached also to the company of women. Priding himself, however, on his stoicism, he never, at any period of his history, condescended to voluptuousness. His sense of manly pride prevented him from becoming immodest or indecent. This feeling at the same time inspired him with the idea that everything except the hunt and the war-path was below the dignity of man. The sentiments, therefore, which saved the female sex from becoming the mere food of lust, consigned it to an inferior position. The Indian women formed the labouring class. Such a result was inevitable. The warrior would only follow the chase or fight. There was labour to be performed. No men were to be employed for hire. Whatever, therefore, was to be done must be done by the females. The wife is, consequently, her husband’s slave. She plants the maize, tobacco, beans, and running vines; she drives the blackbird from the corn, prepares the store of wild fruits for winter, tears up the weeds, gathers the harvest, pounds the grain, dries the buffalo meat, brings home the game, carries wood, draws water, spreads the repast, attends on her husband, aids in canoe building, and bears the poles of the wigwam from place to place. Among the trading communities she is especially valuable,--joining in the hunt, preparing the skins and fur, and filling the wigwam with the riches of the prairie, which the men exchange for the means of a luxurious life. When the hunter kills game he leaves it under a tree, perhaps many miles from the “smokes” of his tribe, returns home, and sends his wife to fetch it. Making garments of skins, sewing them with sinews and thorns; weaving mats and baskets; embroidering with shells, feathers, and grass; preparing drugs and administering medicine; and building huts--are among the other offices of the sex. To educate them for this life of industry, the girls are trained by the severe discipline of toils; taught to undergo fatigue, to be obedient, and to suffer without complaining.

Considered as the slaves of the men, it is natural to find a plurality of wives allowed by the Indian social law; accordingly from Florida to the St. Lawrence polygamy is permitted, though some tribes further north have not adopted the practice. Elsewhere also, in other directions, more than one woman is taken into the chief’s wigwam. They are his servants, and he counts them as we count our horses and cattle; some of the great Mandan warriors have seven or eight; indeed, among all the communities which Catlin had an opportunity of visiting, polygamy was allowed, and it was no uncommon thing for him to find six, eight, ten, twelve, or even fourteen wives in the same lodge. The practice is of an antiquity too remote to fix, and is considered not only as necessary, but as honourable and just; they are servants, and a man’s wealth is partly measured by this standard. This is one of the man’s inducements to follow the custom, though it cannot be denied that some of these stoic warriors delight in a harem from the same motives as the Turk or the Hindu. It is allowed, we say, to all, but is principally confined to the great chiefs and medicine men, the others being too humble or too poor to obtain girls from their fathers: there are, indeed, few instances in which an ordinary man has more than one squaw, and it might be supposed that his wigwam was most peaceful; but it is not so. The jealousy of the Indian women is not of the same kind as with Europeans; it is watchful of strangers, not of regular wives, and six or seven of these dwell in great harmony under the same roof. So well established is this usage among them, that civilization meets more resistance in attempting to break it down, than in any other of its efforts; indeed, in overthrowing polygamy among the North-American Indians, or the remnant which is left of them, we shall overthrow their whole social economy and change their national character, and this it will be long before we are able to do. Probably the custom will continue as long as the race exists, and be only extinguished with it. Instances, indeed, have occurred, in which an Indian has sworn obedience to our social law, but many examples also are known of a return to the old habit. Sir George Simpson relates an anecdote of one who came into the settled parts, learned to read and write, adopted the principle of monogamy, and, returning among his countrymen, sought to persuade them to follow the same practice, and acquire the same accomplishments. They held long arguments with him upon the subject, debated gravely, and, in the end, instead of being converted by him, won him back to their ancient institution. He took a great number of wives, forswore books, and alluded no more to his designs of social reform. Some shame, however, possessed his mind, so that, when some Europeans were in the village, he kept in his wigwam and would not see them.

A chief named Five Crows, of the Cayux tribe, offered also to renounce polygamy, but it was from impulse only, and not from the discovery of any social principle. He had five wives, and great wealth in horses, cattle, and slaves. Falling in love, however, with a young Christian girl, the daughter of a gentleman in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he dismissed his old companions, and with great parade and confidence presented himself, made the proposal, but, to his infinite astonishment as well as mortification, was rejected; in a transport of spite, he immediately married one of his own slave girls. Generally, however, the American Indians are far less susceptible of the sentiment of love, still less of sensuality, than natives of Asiatic blood, and women among them are usually viewed with indifference; instances of the contrary occur and will be alluded to.

Whether polygamists or otherwise, the American Indians universally recognise the marriage contract. There is no such thing among them as a tribe practising promiscuous intercourse; the reports of such are idle tales. Such a community would become extinct, in the inevitable course of nature. The circumstances of the contract vary, however, in different parts, and among different societies. In fertile districts polygamy is more common; in barren tracts most of the men of all classes have only one wife. In some communities the man takes his squaw for life, and only divorces her for a recognised cause; in others, no more than a temporary union is expected. Everywhere, however, the condition of the sex is humiliating, if not miserable, and marriage is no more than the conjunction of a master with his servant. Thus the noblest institution of society is perverted into a form of slavery. That polygamy is practised cannot, nevertheless, be lamented in a social view. The frequency of wars among the American Indians, in their original state, caused a disproportion of the sexes, which allowed many of the men to take several wives, without preventing all from having one. Had this custom not been prevalent, one alternative only would have remained to the superfluous women--they would have become common prostitutes.

The conditions and forms of the marriage contract are various only in the inferior details--the general tenour of them being that a man procures a woman from her father as a purchase, and acquires in her a property over which he has the control of a master. Some restrictions, however, are laid upon the intercourse of the sexes. Marriage cannot be contracted among any of the tribes which originally dwelt east of the Mississippi, or indeed anywhere between kindred of a certain degree. The Iroquois warrior may choose a partner from the same tribe, but not the same cabin, or group of wigwams. For it is to be recollected that, among the tribes, especially of the Algonquin race, the whole family, or clan of several families, dwell together, bearing a common designation. One of that nation must look for a wife beyond those who bear the same token or family symbol. The Cherokee would marry at once a mother and her daughter, but never a woman of his own immediate kindred. The Indians of the Red River frequently take two or more sisters to wife at once.

The manners of the Algonquin race are generally similar. The young man desiring a wife offers a gift--or, if he be poor, his friends do it for him--to the girl’s father. If this be accepted, the marriage is complete. He goes to dwell in the woman’s house for a year, surrendering the gains of one hunting season to her family, and then taking her away to a wigwam of his own.

The contract is, with all the other tribes, usually made with the girl’s father; she is virtually bought and sold. In many cases she is never consulted at all, and the whole is a mere mercenary transaction. Instances do occur, also, where the parties approach each other, express mutual affection, make arrangements, and swear vows, sacred and inviolable as vows can be; but the marriage is never consummated without payment to the bride’s father. In the interior of Oregon the permission of the chief is first asked, then the approval of the parents, then the assent of the girl; but if she object, her decision is conclusive. If she consent, the man gives from one to five horses to her father; they have a feast, and the ceremony is complete. Espousals often take place during infancy, but neither is absolutely bound by this engagement. The influence of the parents is, however, so powerful, that their will is seldom or never resisted; so that a bargain is often concluded, and a price paid; while the girl is a child. Occasionally the female courts the male--that is, proposes to become his squaw, and promises to be faithful, good-tempered, and obedient, if he will take her to his hut. He seldom refuses, for polygamy is permitted, and a husband may in this region put away his wife when he pleases. He usually allows each to have a separate fire.

The missionaries in Oregon have had some success, and have displayed more prudence than some of their brethren of the same profession in the island of Tahiti. Men who had a plurality of wives were required, on their conversion, to maintain them; while those who had only one were forbidden to take more.

On the Red River, when a young man desires a girl as wife, he addresses her father, and, if accepted by him, dwells in his wigwam for a year--as among the Algonquins--and then takes her home. This is only observed with the first; he adds to the number, if he is wealthy, as fast as he can. Few of the women are thus left single, and scarcely any common prostitutes are found. Some will occasionally bear children before marriage; and the zeal of the missionary West was displayed in somewhat of a fanatical spirit by his refusing to baptize a child not born in formal wedlock. We may, however, forgive this eccentric spirit for the motive which created it; and must admit that, as Sir George Simpson bears witness, the Indians of Oregon are vastly reformed, and chiefly by missionary influence.

Among the curious customs preceding marriage in other parts of North America, is that of the lover going at midnight into the tent of the woman he desires, and, lighting a splinter of wood, holding it to her face. If she wake and leave the torch burning, it is a sign for him to be gone; if she blow it, he is accepted, and we are told that this frequently leads to immoral intercourse. Catlin knew a young chief of the Mandans on the Upper Missouri, who took four wives in one day, paying for each a horse or two. They were from twelve to fifteen years old, and sat happily in his wigwam, perfectly contented to dwell under his commands. He was applauded for the act. This extreme youth in the bride is common among the tribes; children pass from infancy to womanhood by a single bound--we are assured, on good testimony, that mothers twelve years of age are not unfrequent. The youths are led by precept and example to adopt marriage; celibacy beyond the age of puberty being very rare, especially in those communities which have come into familiar contact with Europeans. It appears indeed that this plan is resorted to by the men to secure virgins as their wives, for among few barbarous nations is the chastity of unmarried woman safe very long after she has reached a marriageable age. To have no husband is esteemed by the females a misfortune and a disgrace, while to have no wife entails great discomfort on a man.

It has already been shown that, when married, the woman becomes her husband’s servitor; that she is, in many cases, the humiliated drudge, in all, the humble attendant on her master; that she waits on him in submissive silence while he eats, and approaches him with the deference due from an inferior to a superior being. Those who infer, however, from these circumstances that the sentiments of conjugal, filial, and parental affection are unknown to the Indian race, think erroneously of them. Strong and tender attachments continually spring up between the sexes. The lover sings of the girl he has chosen, and takes her home with the delight of gratified affection. The husband, too, when he devolves upon his wife all the labours of the wigwam, is no more conscious that he is using her harshly than she is that she occupies an unnatural position. Ideas and sentiments are often no more than things of habit, and with the Indian chief strong love is not inconsistent with his walking in lordly indolence along the forest path while she is bearing the heavy wigwam poles behind. Heckewelder relates a singular instance of indulgence, which, it must be confessed, is rare among the barbarians of North America. There was a scarcity in the district inhabited by a certain tribe, and an Indian woman, being sick, expressed a strong desire for a mess of Indian corn. Her husband having been told that a trader at Lower Sandarsky had a little, set off on horseback for that place, a hundred miles distant, gave his steed in exchange for a hatful of grain, returned home on foot, and gratified his wife by the treat he had thus procured. It is seldom that the most polished society presents a similar instance of kindliness. Many pictures of domestic happiness are exhibited among the Indians. The Blackfeet, Sanee, and Blood Indians, reckon it among their chief desires that their wives may live long and look young. Smoke sometimes rises for forty years from the same hearth, with one couple presiding over it. On the other hand, the husband’s infidelity or harshness sometimes drives his wife to suicide, for the woman has no protector. The life of hardship they lead soon strips them of all their personal beauty, when they are entirely consigned to toil. In spite of this, they are well fed, healthy, and robust, unlike the women of Australia who are stinted in food, and often deformed or crippled by the severity of their labour. Nature has been very indulgent to them. Scarcely any have more than five, and few more than three children. Easy travail takes away one affliction from their lot. The pains of delivery are seldom prolonged for more than a quarter of an hour, and she who groans under the acutest pang is prophesied, with a taunt, to be the mother of cowards. Death, however, occasionally ensues. The Indian mother loves her children dearly, never trusting it to a hireling nurse--which indeed could not be found; for no woman would put away her own infant to suckle another’s. Bearing the cradle on her back she performs her daily task, and if she die the nursling is laid in her grave. One curious and beautiful custom is that of carrying the cradle of a dead nursling child for a whole year, and all are familiar with the story of the Canadian mother bedewing the grave of her child with milk from her bosom. Infanticide is a rare and secret crime, not by any means to be enumerated among the characteristics of their manners.

Marriage among the North-American Indians is contracted for the happiness and comfort of the man. He is bound to live with his wife only so long as these are enjoyed. Adultery, indolence, intemperance, and sterility are among the causes of divorce. It takes place without formality by simple separation or desertion; and where there are no children is very easy. Their offspring forms their most powerful bond; for, where the mother is discarded, the unwritten law of the red man allows her to keep the children whom she has borne or nursed. The husband detecting his wife in adultery may cut off her nose, or take off part of her scalp. He sometimes kills her with her paramour at once; and the only blame attached to him on the occasion is, descending from his dignity to feel so strongly the loss of one woman, when another may easily be procured to supply her place.

The idea of chastity as a positive virtue is but feebly developed among them. With the men, indeed, it is a Spartan quality, as opposed to effeminacy; otherwise, the promiscuous sleeping of whole families in the same chamber, with various other circumstances, would tend much to immorality. Nevertheless, among some tribes, as that of the Mandans, the women are delicate and modest; and in the wigwams of the respectable families virtue is as cherished, and as unapproachable, as anywhere in the world. Generally the Indians are decent, and, with the exception of those customs which form the basis of their manners, and result directly from their national character, might be won over without difficulty to the amenities of civilized life. Many of the squaws, of course, in North America, as elsewhere, are immodest, and seek occasion to engage in an intrigue. With the unmarried girls the same is the case. A bastard child may be born without entailing great shame upon its mother, though the seducer is greatly despised; but such an occurrence is rare, not altogether, however, because the females are too chaste, but because they are too cautious, and employ means to procure abortion. This practice is sometimes resorted to by the squaws, though discountenanced by the men, except when they are on the march, or hotly pressed by an enemy.

From a notice of their punishments in Hunter’s narrative of his captivity, it would appear that the last act of depravity is not unknown among the Indians. Adultery, he tells us, where not perpetrated by the husband’s consent, is punishable with divorce. We might doubt the testimony of this writer, but that Wilkes found Indians in the far north, within the range of the Hudson’s Bay territories, who would gamble away their wives, and prostitute them for money. These men he believed to be degraded from their original condition, but various authors speak of a similar practice. Carver relates that, among the Manedowessis, it was a custom when a young woman could not get a husband, for her to assemble all the chief warriors of the tribe in a spacious wigwam, to give them a feast, and then, retiring behind a screen, to prostitute herself to each in succession. This gained her great applause, and always insured her a husband. It was, however, nearly obsolete when he wrote, and appears now to be altogether extinct.

Many of the Europeans dwelling on the Red River were accustomed to take concubines during the period of their residence there. The Indians, who are civilized, as it is called, in the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada, have thus learned also the worst vices of Europe. Maclean, a very recent writer, declares that the Christianized tribes in the Hudson’s Bay territories have been deteriorated by intercourse with the whites, become drunken, sensual, and depraved. The venereal disease commits frightful ravages among them. Most of their diseases arise from excess of one kind or another. He says that the men employed by the Company are chiefly reconciled to their hard employment and poor remuneration by the immorality of the women, of whom large numbers follow the occupation of prostitutes, and sell themselves for the vilest price. On the north-west coast, chastity is scarcely even a name; indeed, there is no word in the language of the people to express that idea. The sea tribes are, indeed, in all cases, the most licentious; which appears to justify the remark, that intercourse with a strange unsettled population has demoralized them.

At some parts of the coast where the trading ships touch for supplies, hundreds of women come down, and, by an indecent display of their persons, endeavour to obtain permission to go on board. When Sir George Simpson arrived at one of these ports a man asked for the captain’s wife, and offered his own in exchange. In that part of the country the tyranny over the female sex is even more severe than in the interior. When a man takes a wife, he purchases her as his perpetual property; and if they separate, whether from an offence of hers or his, she must never marry again. She usually takes to clandestine prostitution as a means of living. But such instances as the foregoing are not confined to the coast. In the interior the traveller may observe, wherever a large concourse of Indians is assembled, a number of beautiful and voluptuous-looking women continually mixing in the throng, and throwing their glances upon strangers, or the single young men of the tribe. The Indians have now been removed to a territory beyond the Mississippi; and it is probable their corruption will rapidly increase in proportion to their congregation.

One peculiar feature of the system, introduced of course since Europeans visited the country, remains to be noticed. Many of the white traders, among the tribes of the Upper Missouri, find it good policy to connect themselves by marriage with powerful families, and they procure then the most beautiful girls of the noblest tribes, who aspire with delight to such a station, which usually elevates them above their servile occupations to a life of indolence, ease, and pleasure. These engagements, however, are scarcely marriages--at least in the European sense of the term--ceremonies of any kind being seldom performed. A large price in Indian estimation is paid for the girl, and she is transferred at once to the trader’s house; with equal facility he may annul the contract, leaving his companion to be candidate for another mate, for which her father is not sorry, as he may procure an additional horse again in exchange for her: this is no more than a system of virtual prostitution, in which the woman is hired out as a temporary companion, merely for the pecuniary gain. The trader may procure the handsomest girl in the tribe for two horses; for a gun with a supply of powder and ball; for five or six pounds of beads; for a couple of gallons of whiskey; or a handful of awls. Such is the price at which the Indian chief will prostitute his daughter. Occasionally, it must be added, the couple thus united live together permanently as man and wife, the possibility of which is, indeed, almost always supposed.

The Indians of New Caledonia, though not belonging to the same stock with the red race of North America, may be noticed here: they are extremely profligate; the venereal disease is common among them; and the blessing of a healthy climate is rendered nugatory by the intemperance of the people. Among them, nevertheless, women are held in more estimation than among the red tribes, for the men are not possessed by that sense of lordly dignity which disdains at once to become sensual, and to share the labours of the inferior sex. Women assist in the councils, and those of high rank are even admitted to the feasts. During the fishing season each sex is equally employed, and so in all their other tasks. Lewdness could not be carried to greater excess than it is among them: both men and women are addicted to the vilest crimes; they abandon themselves in youth to the indulgence of their most unbridled lust, and the country owes its rapid decrease of population to the universal depravity of the people. No man marries until his animal appetite is satiated upon the voluntary prostitutes who abound, and then his wife, if dissatisfied with the restraints of matrimony, may refuse to dwell with him; the union is consequently broken by mutual consent, for a certain time or for ever. Meanwhile they addict themselves to their former pleasures, but the woman is nominally prohibited, by law, under pain of death, from cohabiting with any man during this period of separation from her husband; he seldom cares, however, to enforce his right, and she seldom fails to break the law. Polygamy is allowed, but only one woman is actually a wife--the rest are mere concubines; the chief one may be supplanted by a new favourite, when the old one yields without a murmur, though occasionally a woman of violent passions will destroy herself.

To illustrate the general subject of the condition of women among the North-American Indians, we may notice an incident described by the observant traveller Catlin. When, among the Sioux, he proposed to paint the portrait of a woman, his condescension was regarded by the warriors of the community first as incredible and then as ridiculous. It appeared marvellous that he should think of conferring on the females the same honour he had conferred on the medicine men and braves; those whom he selected were laughed at by hundreds of others who were, nevertheless, jealous of the distinction. The men who had been painted said that if the artist was going to paint women and children the sooner he destroyed their portraits the better; the women had never taken scalps, never done anything but make fires and dress, with other occupations equally servile: at length, he explained that the portraits of the men were wanted to show the chiefs of the white nation who were great and worthy among the Sioux nation, while the women were only wanted to show how they looked and how they dressed: by this means he attained his object. Mr. Catlin considers that, on the whole, the Old World has no superior morality or virtue to hold up as an example to the American Indian races. The degradation of the women, however, is denied by none, though a woman of superior courage or contrivance sometimes places herself above the degrading laws which depress the rest of her sex. Thus one whom Catlin saw joined boldly in a dance--though females are only allowed to join in a few of these--played off great feats before the warriors, and for her audacity no less than for her skill was greeted with thundering peals of applause, besides a pile of gifts[62].

OF PROSTITUTION AMONG THE INDIANS OF SOUTH AMERICA.

The plan and purpose of this inquiry will by this time have become obvious to every reader. It is to afford a comparative view of the state of manners throughout the world, with reference to public morals, the condition and the character of the female sex. We have chosen to treat of the barbarians in a separate division of the inquiry, and for this reason have left a large portion of Africa, and by far the greatest portion of North America, for future pages. With respect to South America, its various states will be classed among those half-barbarous communities, which we shall take as the link between the savage and the civilized portions of the globe; for, in spite of the dreams in which some romantic travellers have indulged, Lima is only fit to be compared with Algiers, and Brazil with Morocco. Leaving, therefore, these half-caste societies, as we shall next turn to them in a separate notice, we may briefly treat of the Indian race which still, though in numbers awfully reduced, clings to its native soil in South America.

A very brief description will suffice. Remembering the difference of character between the Indian of the North and the Indian of the South, we may, in most respects, apply our last notices to the present subject. The barbarians with whom we have now to deal are not possessed by that rigid masculine vanity which inspires them with a contempt not only of the female sex, but of the pleasures they furnish to men of more sensual temperaments and more effeminate mould. They have less pride, but not more manliness than the Indians of the Red Race. There is no comparison, in point of mental and moral character, between the savage of the Brazilian forest and the stately Huron or Iroquois, or the warrior of the Algonquin race.

Two classes of Indians exist in South America--the pure native, and the breed corrupted by intercourse with Europeans, half-castes, and the rest of that variety of colours which have been produced between the white and the original tenant of the soil. The first is now an exceedingly small family, and some accounts have represented it as eminent for virtue and simplicity. We know that romantic pictures have been drawn of the golden days when Montezuma reigned in the Valley of Mexico, and gave laws to the free population of the country; but sober research has dissipated the idea that he was the governor of a civilized and polished nation. Superior, indeed, the Mexicans were to the savages who occupied so large a portion of the New World, but they were deficient in many of the arts, and gross in many of the manners which assist in comparing the standard of a people’s progress. This much has been ascertained, though it is little. At the present day, the great characteristics of the barbarian state are strongly exhibited in this as in other parts of South America. The miserable remnant of the Indian race grows yearly more debased, learning little from its European preceptors except profligacy and the coarsest arts of vice. Throughout the region women are degraded. The men generally sleep and lounge, or occupy themselves with easy tasks, but more from indolence than pride, while the women perform the labours of the house and of the field. Such is almost the universal practice of Indian manners in South America. Instances of the contrary, indeed, there are. King found among the Chedirrione tribes of the Argentine Republic, a primitive state of society, no less innocent than simple. The women were modest, the men kind to them, and labour was justly shared. All property was in common, and the members of the community lived in perfect brotherhood. This, however, is only one cheerful spot upon the surface of South-American manners. In the Central Region the females are degraded, and chastity a rare virtue. Women may bear children before marriage without shame, and the intercourse of the sexes is unrestrained.

Among the Indians of Brazil a curious system of manners existed before the establishment of European power, and many traces of it still exist. No man might marry until he had killed an enemy. When a girl reached the age of puberty her hair was cut off, her back tattooed, and she wore a necklace of the teeth of wild beasts until her hair grew again. Bands of cotton were fastened about her waist and the fleshy parts of her arms, to signify her maidenhood. It was said that if any but a pure virgin wore these emblems, the evil spirit would bear her away; but the national belief was not sufficiently strong to render this a defence of chastity, for it was lost without reproach or fear, and incontinence was regarded as no offence. Sleeping in crowds, in large common dormitories produced a pernicious effect on the people, destroyed all ideas of decency, and caused universal lewdness. When a man tired of his wife, he put her away and took another; indeed, as many as he pleased. Although unrestrained polygamy was allowed, the first wife, however, continued to enjoy some privileges, as having a separate berth to sleep in, and a separate plot of ground to cultivate for her own use. Nevertheless she was bitterly jealous of those who supplanted her, and frequently, when altogether neglected by her husband, abandoned herself altogether to vice, and became a clandestine prostitute to any of the young men who would flatter or pay her for the favour.

Being regarded, more or less, as property, a man’s wives formed part of his estate, and were bequeathed on his death to his brother or nearest kinsman. The women thus procured were seldom treated with any delicacy or consideration, yet they found sources of happiness, and were often lively and gay to the last degree. When utterly miserable the female sex does not delight to clothe itself in gaudy attire, or adorn itself with sparkling trinkets, as in Brazil, where masculine vanity ran so high that it declared certain ornaments to be the exclusive privilege of men.

In the neighbouring regions there was some variety among the different tribes. The Tyrinambas used their women fairly, though they somewhat overloaded them with employment. They were, however, generally happy, and were principally employed in spinning and weaving--for the industrial arts had reached that stage among them. They also cultivated the ground. On this subject a curious and not unpoetical idea prevailed among some of the Indians of South America. It was, that as females only bore children, so the grain planted by their hands would fructify in a more plentiful increase than that sown by men. Female porters, also, formed a considerable class.

In Paraguay the wars that spread havoc among the miserable people gave rise to a flagitious custom, which destroyed the population more rapidly than pestilence or the sword. No woman ever reared more than one child. The difficulty of subsistence was one cause which induced this custom. The practice of producing abortion was adopted in preference to infanticide, since it inflicted a less violent shock on the natural feelings of the woman. Remonstrated with upon the horror of the crime, one mother replied that an infant was a great incumbrance, that parturition took away from the grace of the figure, rendering her less attractive to the men, and moreover that abortion was easier than delivery. The manner of procuring it was singular. The woman lay down on her back, and was beaten by two aged crones till the result was certain. Many died in consequence of this barbarous process, while others contracted a disease which afflicted them through life. Men and women were equally debauched. Their gregarious habits afforded unlimited opportunities for intrigue, and husbands cared little to whom their wives prostituted themselves, though they regarded them as absolute property, branding them on the thigh or bosom with a hot iron as they did their horses. One peculiar custom obtained among them--the married spoke in a dialect different from that employed by the unmarried people.

Contrasted with this community was the Abifrone, a tribe inhabiting the same region, more long-lived, healthy, and numerous, because they were temperate and chaste. Morality was characteristic of them, and prudence also. The men seldom or never married before the age of thirty, or the women before that of twenty, and were usually continent before contracting that engagement. A wife was purchased from her parents, and was entirely at their disposal, unless bold enough to run away. There was some poetry in the rite of marriage. If the suit was accepted, eight maidens carried a canopy of fine tissue over the bride, who walked in silence, and with downcast eyes, to her husband’s tent. There he received her with signs of love; she then returned, bearing the few domestic articles necessary to their simple mode of life, and her new master dwelt in her father’s house with her until she had borne a child, or he had sufficiently proved his affection towards her. Women were obliged to suckle their children for three years, and forbidden to hold connubial intercourse during that period. This induced the practice of procuring abortion, for the wife feared her husband would forget and abandon her after the long interval. Depopulation was thus caused. Infanticide, also, was practised, but the boys were selected as victims rather than the girls, who were valuable to their parents. The intercourse of the sexes before marriage was rigidly watched; the maidens were educated in habits of industry, and taught to prize their virtue. When the missionaries came among them preaching against polygamy and divorce, the women of this tribe were eager listeners.

Transferring our attention to another part of the South-American Continent, we find among the Sambos of the Mosquito Shore some curious customs. They are not of the Indian race, but closely allied with them in their social habits: when a man commits adultery the injured husband shoots a beeve, takes a horse, or carries off something of value, no matter to whom it may belong, and the proprietor must obtain restitution from the adulterer. Polygamy is practised among them, but one wife is superior to the rest; they marry very young; the Indians of the same country have a plurality of wives, but each must have a separate hut; if the husband makes a present to one, he must make one of equal value to each of the others, and he must spend his time with them equally, week by week.

In Venezuela, among the native tribes, marriage is frequently dispensed with altogether, and cohabitation takes place for a temporary period, or permanently, as the sentiments of the man may incline. This is the case even among the Christianized people, but no blame can be attached to them, poor as they are; for the priests, grasping everywhere, charge such high fees, that marriage is a privilege of the rich.

The same characteristics prevail all over South America, in Chili, Peru, Mexico, and among the Araucanian tribes: the men idle, the women labour; and the national idea is, that one sex is born to command, the other to obey. The Araucanians carry this principle to excess, and do not allow their wives to eat until they are satisfied. When a man desires to have a girl as his wife, he proposes for her to the father; if the father consent, the girl, without being informed of the bargain, is sent out on some pretended errand, when she is seized by her purchaser and carried home to his tent or hut. There a feast is prepared; their friends assemble; her price is paid in horses, cattle, or money, and the ceremony is concluded by a debauch. Immorality among them is rather secret than recognised; in Peru it is affirmed that, among the native Indians, instances of infidelity between man and wife are very rare, for where polygamy is sanctioned and regulated by law, it is by no means inconsistent with chastity.

In New Andalusia the men and women go all but naked, wearing only slight girdles, and appearing strangers to the sentiment of decency. The condition of the female sex is that of privation and labour; yet, though overwhelmed with toil, they appear happier, because naturally more buoyant of heart than the squaws of North America. Even among the Indians on the banks of the Xingu, where the lordly husband lies all day in a hammock, and requires literally to be fed by his faithful wife, the women sing, dance, and seem to enjoy their lives most heartily. So, throughout the whole region, humiliation and slavery form their lot, but their spirit yields willingly to the yoke, which consequently does not pain them.

The regular prostitute class of South America belongs to the half-civilized communities, and will be noticed in our reference to them[63].

OF PROSTITUTION IN THE CITIES OF SOUTH AMERICA.

When we visit the semi-civilized communities of South America, instead of the barbarian tribes still running wild in its deserts of forest, the state of morals we discover presents a contrast by no means favourable to the half-educated States, where a hybrid compromise seems to have been made between refinement and barbarism. The general characteristic of South-American society is profligacy. Almost every city on that continent is demoralized and debauched; Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chili, all present features very similar, and differing only in the inferior details. Professional prostitutes, indiscriminate in their companionship, form only a small part of the system. Immorality takes many other forms. This, however, we learn only from the general terms in which traveller after traveller has described those regions, especially the cities. Absolute information we have none, except with respect to the station occupied by women, and their moral demeanour in society. Statistics are entirely wanting. All writers seem by mutual consent to have avoided our subject, and left us to conjecture the extent and character of prostitution in Mexico, Rio Janeiro, Lima, and the various other cities of South America.

In Mexico, the women of the upper or idle classes are described as elegant, polished, and fascinating, perfectly easy in society, and attached above all things to the gaieties of life. Their morals appear to be similar to those of the female sex in the older cities of Spain--that is, there are many profligates among them; but a large number are well-conducted, virtuous women, not very timid in society, but not immodest. Among the lower classes the average of Spain may also be adopted--if we may ground an opinion on the vague accounts we receive from travellers.

In Lima, society is far more profligate. The women are superior to the men in little more than affection for their children; in other respects their general conduct is loose. They are devoured with that passion for intrigue--not amounting in many cases to actual adultery--which has been a famous trait in the manners of that country in Europe whence South America has derived all its impress of civilization. One remark which is true of Lima, applies also to the other cities. The veil, which in some countries is worn as the guard of virtue, is here the screen of vice. It is inviolable. The woman so draped may pass her own husband unrecognised, so that she can play truant as she pleases. Two or three females of good station often pay visits at the houses of strange men, without being known. Men sometimes take up with their own wives in the streets, or at some place of public entertainment, or on the alameda, or city promenade, without being aware who their companions are.

The state of manners indicated by frequent allusions to these facts is far from pure. We have also a few other glimpses into the society of Mexico and Lima. In the former there were, in 1842, 491 persons--312 men, and 179 women--committed to prison for “prostitution, adultery, bigamy, sodomy, and incest;” besides 65 men, and 21 women, for “rape and incontinence.” So far for the capital of Mexico.

In Lima, the chief city of Peru, the number of illegitimate children annually born is about 860; and of new-born infants exposed and found dead, 460. Two-thirds of the former, and four-fifths of the latter, belong to the coloured population--which is, indeed, in a proportionate majority. A dead child is picked up without any sensation being excited among the inhabitants of the locality in which it is found. Frequently it is cast away unburied. Ischudi has seen these little carcasses dragged about by vultures, in the public streets.

The white creoles are noted for sensuality, as well as a brutal want of sentiment towards their offspring. The dances in which they indulge are some of them of indescribable obscenity, and the whole population is addicted to demoralizing pleasures. In Lima, however, though delicate modest women are rare, actual adultery is not often committed by that sex. The men seem to obey the exhortation of Cato, who encouraged prostitutes, while he abhorred unfaithful wives--“Courage, my friends; go and see the girls, but do not corrupt the married women.” Concubinage is more common, or rather, perhaps, more public than in Europe, and the father is usually very fond and careful of his natural children. Where marriage is contracted, it is, all over the Continent, fulfilled at an early age. In Brazil the neglect of this institution and the profligate intercourse of the sexes have diminished the population to an immense extent. In Rio Janeiro, however, we are told that the manners of the people have much improved since they have become more republican in their manners and ideas. The women there are shy and retired, but ignorance and awkwardness more than modesty may be assigned as the cause. While slavery was a public institution, which the government desired to abolish, the only restriction in the intercourse of the sexes was among the slaves. Procreation among them was as far as possible prevented; the women and the men in Janeiro were locked up at night in separate apartments, and carefully watched during the day.

In Chili, also, a reform of manners has commenced since the reduction of the military power, which is proverbially demoralizing. The higher classes of females have a character for modesty and virtue, but the men generally indulge themselves in vicious pleasures to a very considerable extent. It is, perhaps, in Brazil that society is most corrupt, for there the common decencies of life are, among the inferior orders, grossly disregarded. Matheson, the traveller, slept in the same room with a young married couple; girls are sold as concubines, and children are hired out by their mothers to prostitution. The youth of that sex bathe, while very young, entirely naked, and afterwards with scarcely any clothing, before the public eye, so that altogether the manners of the people are wanting in decency.

Travellers agree in assigning as one chief cause of this general demoralization, the profligate conduct of the Roman Catholic clergy; their lives are, in many cases--and of course there are many exceptions also--exceedingly scandalous. Numbers of them, bound by their vows to celibacy, live with concubines, and are not even faithful or constant to them. Where the priests have such influence, and indulge in such practices, we may expect to find a low state of morals. That this is the case in the cities of the South America most travellers agree in declaring; but unfortunately their notices are only vague generalities, and we have no positive information as to the extent and character of prostitution in those cities[64].

OF PROSTITUTION IN THE WEST INDIES.

A very slight notice of the West Indies will suffice, until we arrive at that division of our inquiry which includes the half-civilized communities, and the colonial societies related to Great Britain. Of the barbarous race scarcely a vestige remains, and of the negro population a general view is all that is required, except with reference to the prostitution carried on under the encouragement of the European settlers, which we shall hereafter describe. When Columbus first visited the beautiful islands of the West Indian group, he found two classes of people inhabiting them--the savage and cannibal Caribs, who delighted in war, and preyed upon the weaker and more effeminate tribes; and the comparatively innocent and simple communities, whose unwarlike habits rendered them victims to their more powerful neighbours. The characteristics of these distinct populations were strongly illustrated in their treatment of women. The mild and peaceful islanders admitted the female sex to a participation in the delights and enjoyments of life, allowed their women to mingle with them in the dance, to inherit power, to wear what ornaments they fancied; and shared, indeed, with them all the opportunities of happiness which belonged to their savage condition. Among the cannibal Caribs, on the other hand, a different fashion prevailed. The handsomest and youngest of female captives taken in war were preserved as slaves and companions, while their other prisoners were devoured. The lot of these exiles, however, was little superior to that of the Carib women themselves. The nation was low and barbarous, and accordingly treated its women with harshness and indignity. Proud of their superior power and courage, the men looked down on the females as on an inferior sex, whose degradation was natural and just. Although a wife was awarded as the prize of valour, she was regarded as property acquired. She was her husband’s slave. All the drudgery of his habitation fell on her. She bore his implements for war or for the chase. She carried home the game he had killed; and never sat down to a meal with him, or even dared to eat in his presence. She approached him with abject humility, and if she ever complained of ill usage, it was at the peril of her life. Nevertheless, the child born of this slave was loved and tended with wonderful care. This description, however, must apply to the weaker race of women, not to those Amazons described by Columbus, who, well-trained to war, rivalled in power of muscle and vigour of limb the bull-stranglers of Sparta.

These, however--the original inhabitants of the West-Indian Islands--have disappeared, and been succeeded by another race or compound of races, among which the Negroes only claim our notice at present. Among the blacks of Antigua, as an example of the rest, immorality is a characteristic which may be traced to the institution of slavery. Infanticide is frequently practised by them, especially since the Emancipation Act was passed. The reason of this circumstance, which at first seems strange, is very clear. Under the institution of slavery, negroes were not allowed to marry, or, at least, their marriages were never held as binding before the law. They therefore cohabited, and their unions lasted usually only so long as the caprice of affection, or the heat of a criminal appetite existed. Women, therefore, continually had five, six, seven, eight, or nine children by various fathers, and no disgrace was attached to the fact. A new system was introduced by the abolition of the slave system. The sentiments of shame and modesty have been cultivated in their minds; and the idea of female virtue has at least been awakened, so that they often seek to escape the consequences of an illicit amour by destroying the offspring.

One of the demoralizing effects of slavery was the encouragement of a species of concubinage. Rewards, indeed, were held out by some masters to such of the negroes as lived faithfully with a single partner; but the prevalence of vice was all but universal. A permanent engagement between a man and a woman was seldom formed. Two females frequently lived with one man, and of these one was considered his wife and the other his mistress.

When the negroes were emancipated, in 1834, many of them were anxious to be legally married. Numbers had been already united in wedlock by the missionary preachers; yet, though complete in its character, and regarded as a sacred tie, this act was not held as binding by the law, and many of the emancipated negroes, putting away the partners of their compulsory servitude, took new companions to their homes.

The offence of bigamy was not uncommon among them, and still continues to be so. It is prohibited under a severe enactment, but many devices are adopted to elude the law. Concubinage is less openly practised than formerly, but the tie of marriage is by no means generally respected. Chastity is indifferently regarded; and where the men do not prize it in women, women will be at little pains to preserve it for the men. Women are sometimes married who have been living in concubinage with several persons, and become the mothers of numerous children.

The condition of the free female negroes is by no means so degraded as in the original country of the blacks. Women enjoy an independent existence, and live as they please, though many of them labour. Their character is not distinguished by morality. Decency was entirely obliterated from their ideas, and they are only beginning to recover it. Women who were daily stripped and exposed to receive a whipping from the hands of men, could not be expected long to retain the sense of feminine shame; and this process, acting upon one generation after another, has left its impress on the character of the negro population. Human nature, also, was outraged by the gross tyranny of the planters. The intercourse of the sexes was regulated, not with a view to the morals of the negroes, but to the propagation of the species. They were coupled like beasts, to increase the number of slaves on the estate. In consequence of this the degradation of the negro population was so complete that, after it was emancipated, a woman considered it more honourable to become the mistress of a white, than the wife of a black man. In all the islands, indeed, this vile system was carried on. In St. Lucia, however, the intercourse was almost unrestrained, and consequently became in a degree promiscuous; for moral law there was none. The St. Lucia negro, in fact, is, even at this day, averse to matrimony, and inclined to support concubines, to none of whom is he faithful, even for an interval of time. Yet he is thoroughly attached to his children. It has been observed, that if any improvement in the morality of the island has taken place, it is more in the tone than in the temper, in the appearance than in the reality. Infanticide is never practised, or only as a rare and secret crime. It is prevented, however, not by moral restraint, but by the motherly feelings of the women--by the absence of reproach on bastardy, and the facility for rearing children.

In Santa Cruz the same low condition of manners is observable in the negro population; though in Jamaica the negroes are generally married, and are, on the whole, faithful to the engagement. This, however, is the result of the Emancipation Act. Previously to that mighty social reform, marriage, or a connubial contract of any kind, was rare; and the intercourse of the sexes was loose, profligate, and lewd. The men lived either with several concubines at once, or replaced one by another, as their inclination prompted. When the missionaries endeavoured to change this state of things, any couples which submitted to their teaching were sure to be ridiculed and jeered by the servile and demoralized populace. When slavery was abolished, so far had the corruption of manners proceeded, that numbers of the women, in the delirium of their new liberty, abandoned themselves to their vicious appetites, and became common prostitutes.

The example of Europeans has not by any means displayed to the negroes any instruction in morality; on the contrary, it has, to a great extent, encouraged their vices. This we shall show in a future division of the subject. We therefore leave at present the other islands which form the plantation colonies of England and Spain: we shall hereafter visit the native community which has recently made itself ridiculous by enacting the forms of an empire--we allude to Hayti, or St. Domingo. The brief notice we have given is intended to apply to the rude black population, but not in respect of its relation to the white communities[65].

OF PROSTITUTION IN JAVA.

In the island of Java, which is perhaps the most fertile and beautiful country in the world, a curious system of manners now prevails. Hindoos have been succeeded by Mohammedans, and these by Dutch: each of the conquering races has impressed some characteristic trait on the population, and, unfortunately, the stamp of vice is more easily set than any other. The character and condition of the female sex in Java indicate the whole state of manners there. The men are somewhat cold towards the women, a fact which some learned Theban has ascribed to their feeding more on vegetable than on animal substances, but they are neither cruel nor negligent towards them. The institution of marriage is universally known, if not universally practised or generally respected. The lot of women may be described as peculiarly fortunate; in general they are not ill-used at all, and when, as among some of the more opulent, they are secluded, they are rather withdrawn from the indiscriminate gaze of the people, than shut up in lonely secrecy, for they are by no means watched with that exaggerated jealousy which in some parts of the East renders the husband a continual spy on the actions of his wife. Though the man pays a price for his bride, he does not therefore disdain or abuse her.

The condition of the sex in Java is, indeed, an exception to the habitual custom of Asiatics. The women eat with the men, associate with them in all the offices and pleasures of life, and live on terms of mutual equality.

Many queens have, in different States, occupied the throne. The sex is nowhere in the island, as a rule, treated with coarseness, violence, or neglect. They are industrious, and hard-working, but they labour more through desire of praise than through fear of chastisement, and are admitted to the performance of many honourable tasks. Among the wealthier classes men sometimes act tyrannically in their households; but this must be taken as the characteristic not of the race, but of individuals. Those who seclude their wives do so only from the common eye; English gentlemen have often been introduced into the most private chambers of the harem, while the wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs have appeared at the entertainments given by the European residents in Batavia, Sumarang, and other cities, where they conduct themselves usually with modesty and good grace.

Polygamy and concubinage are tolerated, that is, they are practised among the nobility of Java, who do not allow public opinion to interfere with the gratification of their desires; both of these customs are looked upon, however, rather as vicious luxuries, than as established social institutions; yet, however limited their extent, they never fail to degrade the position and to vitiate the character of the female sex. Some circumstances in the feelings of the people prevent either practice from being generally adopted, and the evil is thus, in its moral influence, mitigated. The first wife is always mistress of the household, and the others are little more than her handmaids, who contribute to her husband’s gratification, but never share his rank or his wealth. No man of station will give his daughter as a second or third wife, unless to a chief of far higher nobility than himself; the inferior wives or concubines are therefore of an inferior class. Thus the artificial distinctions of classes vitiate the public morals, for a woman considers it dishonourable, not to prostitute herself, but to prostitute herself to a poor man of humble birth.

When we say that polygamy and concubinage are not general in Java, the reader must by no means infer a high state of manners to exist there. On the contrary, Java is the most immoral country in insular Asia. The woman who would be ashamed to become the second wife of a chief might not be ashamed to commit adultery with him; in general terms, both sexes are extremely profligate and depraved, though the poets and historians of the island boast of chastity as the distinguishing ornament of their women; because a married female shrieks when a strange man attempts to kiss her before her attendants and a large mixed company, they hold up their sex in Java as the standard of feminine purity and virtue.

In most islands of the Indian Archipelago, divorces are not easy to be obtained; but in Java the total separation of married people may be procured with the utmost freedom and facility. It is a privilege in which the women indulge themselves to a most wanton degree, and often so much as to fall little short of prostitution. A wife may turn away her husband by paying him a certain sum of money; he is not, indeed, absolutely bound to accept this, but usually does so, in conformity with the established opinion of society, that it is disreputable to live with a woman on such terms. Women often change their partners three or four times before they are thirty years of age; some have been seen boasting of a twelfth husband. In Java the means of subsistence abound, and are easy to be procured as well by females as by men; one sex is, therefore, in a great measure, independent of the other; women find no difficulty in living without husbands. They are not, consequently, forced to remain in a state of bondage through fear of being drifted destitute upon the world; but, unfortunately for the theories of our new female reformers, the sex in Java, though thus enfranchised, is proverbially dissolute and libertine.

This, nevertheless, in reality is no argument for those who attempt to show that the female sex, enjoying perfect liberty, makes use of its freedom to indulge in vicious pleasures. The women of Java are dissolute, not because they are free of control, but because the whole society of the island is profligate. Among the wealthier classes, especially, the utmost immorality prevails with respect to the intercourse of the sexes. In the great native towns the population is debauched to the last degree. Intrigues among the married women continually occur; and females of high rank have intercourse with paramours, to the knowledge, and almost before the faces, of their husbands. The men are tame and servile, often not daring to revenge their honour or assert the conjugal right, and they are by no means inspired with that fiery spirit of jealousy which among many Asiatics renders a wife sacred from all but her husband’s eye. Females of respectable rank are often the subject of conversation. An inquiry after a man’s family is held by no means insulting, but rather as a conventional act of courtesy.

Flagrant instances of the loose character of Javan manners have come to the notice of travellers. Before the island was absolutely conquered by the Dutch, one of its great princes, being desirous of purchasing the favour of the people, gave many public feasts and entertainments, at which the wives and daughters of the chiefs attended. He seduced one of his guests, a married woman, and was in the habit of passing the night with her, while her husband was engaged with his duty on the public guard. One morning, by chance, the chief returned home earlier than usual, and detected them together. He had, however, discovered the rank of the paramour, and discreetly coughed, that the prince might have an opportunity to escape. He then went into the chamber, and severely flogged his guilty wife. She fled, and complained to the king of the treatment she had received. He being in the critical position of making good his claim to a crown, dared not exercise the usual prerogative of a throne; but called for the man he had injured, made him many rich gifts, and offered him, as compensation, the handsomest woman in his own household. The husband accepted the peace-offerings, and was content to take back his adulterous wife. The relation of a subject to his prince must, at least when developed in this manner, be most unnatural.

Women in Java are usually married very young, though not before the age of puberty, which is speedily reached. The reason assigned by writers for this haste is, that their chastity is no longer safe after they have reached womanhood. Men wait for two or three years after that period, during which they may indulge in unbounded profligacy. At eighteen or twenty a girl is looked upon as verging towards the wane of life, and becomes a suspected character. No age, however, excludes a woman from the chance of a match; but scarcely any are unmarried after 22. Widows at 50 often procure husbands; for men at that period of life usually choose wives equal in years to themselves, and sometimes older.

The preliminary arrangements are made by the parents on both sides; for no intercourse could previously take place between the young people themselves without being, and often justly, the occasion of scandal. They are looked upon, as the natives themselves express it, as mere puppets in the performance. There are three kinds of connection. The first is when the rank of the parties is equal, or when the man is superior to the woman. The second is when the bride is above her husband, who is taken into the house, and adopted into the family, by his father-in-law. The third is a species of concubinage, without any rites whatever, and confirmed by the simple fact of recognised cohabitation. In such cases, as no formality is required to conclude, so none is necessary to dissolve the contract, which is, therefore, no more than a species of prostitution, for the changes of companions are extremely frequent.

In the other two, the ceremonies are similar. The young people are, in all cases, betrothed for a longer or a shorter period before their union--from one month to several years. The father of the youth, having made for his son what he considers a suitable choice, proceeds to the parents of the girl, and proposes for an alliance. If they accept the suit, a betrothal is ratified by some trifling present to the bride. Visits are made, that the intended nuptials may be publicly known. At the third stage in the progress of the transaction the price is arranged, and varies according to the rank and circumstances of the families. Sometimes it is plainly called the purchase-money; sometimes the act of sale is covered by a more delicate term--the deposit. It is usually considered, however, as a settlement or provision for the bride.

The only Mohammedan feature in the whole ceremony is the exchange of vows in a mosque. This is followed by many ritual observances, more of etiquette than religion, and great parade is affected. At length the married people eat rice from one vessel, to typify their common fortune; but in some places the bride washes her husband’s feet, as an acknowledgment of her subjection to him, or else he treads upon a raw egg, and she wipes his foot.

Though, as we have said, polygamy and concubinage are not generally practised, partly because too expensive, partly from a feeling against them--some of the rich chiefs indulge in them to an extravagant degree, and glory in a train of 60 children. The wives, however, as already noticed, can easily release themselves when their married state is deteriorated into real or fancied bondage. The fact of their early marriage, without knowing their future husband, or consenting to the union, causes a great number of divorces. A widow may marry again after three months and ten days have elapsed since her husband’s death.

Though the intercourse of the sexes is so free that vicious inclinations may be indulged without difficulty or peril, the Javans support a large class of women--prostitutes by profession. Adultery is not considered a very heinous crime, but rather an offence against the husband’s property and honour, yet it is attended sometimes with danger, and often with disagreeable results. The vocation of the trading prostitute is not, therefore, taken away. She unites in Java, as in India, the profession of a dancer with her infamous calling.

There is a large class of these dancers in the island. The people are passionately fond of this amusement, but no respectable woman will join in it. The sultans, indeed, used to have some of their most beautiful concubines trained to dance, and they were privileged in the performance of certain figures; but, otherwise, all its professors are prostitutes. Nevertheless, a Javan chief of high rank is not ashamed to be seen before a large mixed assembly tripping with one of these women.

The dancers may be found in all parts of Java, but chiefly in the north-west, towards the capital. They figure at most of the public and private entertainments. Their conduct is so dissolute that the words dancer and prostitute are, in the Javan language, synonymous; yet, on account of the wealth they often amass, petty chiefs occasionally marry them. In such cases they usually, after a few years, become tired of their quiet secluded life, divorce their husbands, and resume their old calling. The dress in which they appear to dance is very immodest, exposing almost the whole bosom, and the attitudes they assume are licentious in a high degree. Nevertheless, they seldom descend to the obscene and degrading postures practised by some of the Bayaderes in India.

The Europeans in Java have not certainly, up to a late period, at least, set to their native subjects an example of pure manners. The Dutch merchant had usually a Javan female at the head of his household, who served him as a mistress as well. Indeed, the marriage ceremony is seldom insisted on by the women; while, among the lower classes, simple cohabitation is the usual method in which the sexes are related. Yet they are by no means so gross and sensual as the wealthier sort of people. Altogether, however, the island is remarkable for the profligacy of its inhabitants. In every city prostitutes abound; and about the roads in their vicinity women may be seen straying, ready for hire. They mostly, as we have said, assume also the profession of dancers, and this, in a manner, covers the profligacy of those who employ them at their houses[66].

OF PROSTITUTION IN SUMATRA.

The population of this extensive island is divided into several tribes, slightly differing in their manners and modes of life. The Rejangs, who may be supposed to represent its original habits, are still rude barbarians. With them, as with many people of the East, the scrupulous attention to external show is by no means accompanied by a similar spirit within. They drape their women from chin to foot, and dread lest a virgin should expose any part of her person; yet modesty is not at all a characteristic of the dwellers in villages and towns, to whom this description refers. Those who live in the rural communities, and are more easy in their costume, distinguish themselves by their decency and decorum. In this is exhibited a curious fact, which may be discovered in many parts of the world.

The civilization, if such it may be called, of Sumatra, is of a peculiar character. Its people are in that stage of their progress when great importance is ascribed to the multiplied formulas of etiquette. Ritual is with them more essential than principle--of which, indeed, they know little. It is wonderful to examine the intricate details of the Sumatran marriage contract. Nearly all the litigation in the country springs from that perplexing cause. Men in a barbarous state appear to be under the influence of some law which forces them into extremes. They must be at one pole or another. Either they dispense altogether with ceremonial usages, and satisfy themselves with obeying the simple dictates of nature, under plain rules for their own convenience, or they divide the sexes by a maze of convention, which prescribes a form for the most trivial occasions of life. True refinement appears to be in the medium; but this is a question still to be resolved. In some districts of Sumatra, Europeans, wearied with the endless legal quarrels arising from these complicated transactions, have prevailed on the people to simplify their code of marriage, and the result has proved beneficial.

Some have supposed that the system of procuring wives by purchase, which renders marriage difficult to the poor, has retarded the growth of population. Others, however, assert, and with much appearance of reason, that in Sumatra at least the contrary is true. Children being considered as property, and daughters being especially valuable for the price they command, powerful incentives to matrimony exist. The purchase-money obtained for the girls supplies wives for the sons, and in few islands are instances of celibacy more rare. It is certain, however, that the fostering, or rendering obligatory, thrifty habits on the young, has a tendency to check population, though it may be only so far as to keep it on a level with the means of subsistence. Various European countries illustrate that truth. In Sumatra, also, we have a wealthy region thinly and badly peopled; but misgovernment, war, and barbarism may be assigned as the chief causes. Besides, it is said the women are naturally unprolific; that they cease to bear children at an early age; that ignorance of the medical art causes thousands to perish of endemic complaints.

There are three modes of forming a marriage contract. The first is that, when one man pays to another a certain sum of money in exchange for his daughter, who becomes a virtual slave. There is usually, however, a certain amount--about five dollars--held back, and, so long as this remains unpaid, friendship is supposed to exist between the families, and the girl’s parents have a right to complain if she be ill-treated. If the husband wound her he is liable to a fine, and in other ways his absolute command is curtailed. When, however, on the occasion of a violent quarrel, the sum is paid, the bond of relationship is broken, and the woman is entirely in her master’s power. The regulations in regard to money are numerous and intricate; but need not be explained in detail. They give occasion, however, as we have said, to endless law-suits, which are bequeathed by one generation to another.

In other cases the marriage contract is an affair of barter. One virgin is given for another, and a man who has not one of his own sometimes borrows a girl, engaging to replace or pay for her when required. A man having a son and a daughter, may give the latter in exchange for a wife to the former. A brother may barter his sister for a wife, or procure a cousin instead. If, however, she be under age, a certain allowance is made until she becomes marriageable.

Another method is practised when a parent desires to get rid of a daughter suffering from some infirmity or defect. He sells her altogether without any reserve, and she has fewer privileges than other classes of wives.

Sometimes a girl evades these laws by an elopement, and a match is formed upon mutual affection. If the fugitive couple are overtaken on the road, they may be separated; but when once they have taken sanctuary, and the man declares his willingness to comply with all the necessary forms, his wife is safely secured to him.

Many persons have assigned to whole nations, in various parts of the world, a Jewish origin, partly because the custom prevails with them of a man marrying his brother’s widow. The Sumatrans, in this case, belong to them also, for the same rule is enforced by them; but if there be no brother surviving, the woman is taken by her husband’s nearest male relation--the father excepted. If any of her purchase-money remains unpaid, her new master is answerable for it.

When, under this system, adultery is committed--which is not frequently the case--the husband usually passes it over, or inflicts revenge with his own hand. It is seldom such an offence is brought before the law. When a man desires to divorce his wife thus married to him, he may claim back her purchase-money, with the exception of twenty-five dollars, as she is supposed, by cohabitation with him, to have diminished in value to that amount. If, having taken a woman, he be unable to pay the whole price, though repeatedly dunned for it, the girl’s parents may sue for a divorce, but they must restore all they have received. The old ceremony consisted merely in cutting a rattan cane in two, in the presence of the disunited couple, their friends, and the chiefs of the province. The woman is expected to take to her husband’s house effects to the value of ten dollars. If she take more, he is chargeable to the amount. Thus the whole transaction is carried on upon mercenary grounds.

The second kind of marriage is, when a virgin’s father chooses for her husband some young man whom he adopts into his family, making a feast on the occasion and receiving what we may term a premium of twenty dollars. The young man is thenceforward a property in his father-in-law’s family. They are answerable for the debts he may incur; but all he has and all he earns belong to them; he is liable to be divorced when they please, and to be turned away destitute. Under certain circumstances he may redeem himself from this bondage, but pecuniary considerations are so entangled with the whole agreement that infinite confusion is the result. Several generations are sometimes bound in this manner before the contract can be legally broken by the fulfilment of all the required conditions.

The Malays of Sumalda have generally adopted the third kind of marriage, which is called the free. It is a more honourable compact, in which the families approach each other on the natural level of equality. A small sum is paid to the girl’s parents, usually about twelve dollars, and an agreement is drawn up, that all property shall be common between husband and wife, and that, when divorce takes place by mutual consent, all shall be fairly divided. If the man only presses a separation, he gives half his effects, and loses the twelve dollars; if the woman, she then loses her right to any but her female paraphernalia. This description of contract, which is productive of most just dealing and felicity, has been adopted in many parts of the island.

The actual ceremony of marriage, though fenced about with so many ceremonial observances, is extremely simple. An entertainment is given, the couple join their hands, and some one pronounces them man and wife.

Where the female sex is a material for sale, little of what we term courtship can be expected. The manners of the country are opposed to it; strict separation is enforced between the youth of different sexes; and when a man pays the full price for a bride, he considers himself entitled to her without any manner of persuasion or solicitation to herself. Nevertheless, traces of gallantry--using that word in its proper, not its ridiculous sense--may be observed in the manners of the people. A degree of respect is shown to women, which may be favourably contrasted with the conduct of some polished nations. On the few occasions on which the young people meet, such as festivals and public gatherings in the village hall, they dance and sing, and behave with much delicacy; mutual attachments often spring out of such association, and the parents frequently promote the desire of union thus arising. In most countries, indeed, the barbarism of the law is mitigated in its influence by the universal operation of the natural human sentiments; it is no less true than strange, that mankind are usually better, not only than their rulers, but than their laws. The festivals are enlivened by dances and songs; the dances have been described as licentious and grotesque, but Marsden, the philosophical historian of Sumalda, only remarks that the figures displayed at English balls are often more immodest and absurd. The songs are usually extempore, and always turn on the subject of love.

The existence or flourishing of any sentiment among a people with whom marriage is a commercial transaction, and who allow a plurality of wives, may be considered incredible; but as, in the first instance, Nature often asserts herself and the law is accommodated to her will, so, in the second, the nature of things prevents any general extension of the practice. Polygamy is permitted; but only a few chiefs have more than one companion. The general indigence of the people is one cause of this, for the perpetual weight of necessity is more powerful than the irregular impulse of animal passion. To be a second wife is also considered by many below the dignity of a reputable person. A man sometimes prefers a divorce for his daughter when he hears that her husband is about to take another wife. In the contract which stipulates for a division of property, polygamy is impossible, for this obvious reason, that the wife must have half the husband’s effects, which more than one, of course, could not do. The origin of polygamy in Sumalda and other parts of Asia has been traced by various ingenious writers to different causes; but being, as it is, the indulgence which is a privilege of wealth, it appears to have grown up with the whole system of manners; no natural reason seems to exist for it. The proportion of the sexes is nearly equal, and all the theories grounded on a different assumption fall to pieces. Wherever polygamy exists, women are purchased, and where they are thus viewed as property, wealthy men will surely distinguish themselves from their neighbours by a plurality of wives; and this happens in Rajpooratan, where the women are far less numerous than the men, as well as in other countries where they out-number them to an equal extent.

In the country parts of Sumatra, chastity, says Marsden, exists more than among any other people with which he was acquainted. The same characteristic appears to distinguish them at the present day. Interest, as well as decency, renders the parents anxious to preserve the virtue of their daughters. The price of a virgin is so far above that of a woman who has been defiled, that the girls are jealously watched, lest their value deteriorate in this respect. But the truth of the Oriental idea is sometimes illustrated--that girls should marry as soon as they are marriageable, or they soon cease to be chaste. In Sumatra they remain single for some time after that period, and occasionally lose their chastity in consequence. In such cases the seducer, if discovered, may be forced to marry the girl, and pay her price, or make good the diminution he has occasioned in her value.

Regular prostitution is little known, except in the towns. There, especially in the bazaars, women following that calling may be found mixed up with the concourse of sailors and others who support them. In the seaports especially, where the population is not only floating, but mixed from various nations, there is a great deal of profligacy, and troops of professional prostitutes ply the streets for hire. Europeans, however, who represent the general manners of the island from the experience of short visits to the maritime cities, convey a false impression of the people. The Sumatran is, as a rule, contented to marry and be faithful to his wife. This proceeds, however, it would seem, rather from some peculiar tone of temperament, than from any principles of morality; for their ideas on this subject are, at any rate, widely different from ours. Incest they hold as an offence; but except it occurs within the first degree it is regarded rather as an infraction of the conventional, than the natural law. It is sometimes punished by a fine; but sometimes also the marriage is confirmed, and the parties remain together.

The chiefs of the cannibal nations of Batta have sometimes several concubines. A man once stole a woman of this kind--the favourite of her master--and was punished by being cut to pieces, roasted, and devoured. Among the people of Bulu China, on the east coast, a man may have four wives, and as many concubines as possible. Some of the chiefs possess one of these companions in each town or village of their country. Adultery is punished by death to both criminals.

The general treatment of the sex in Sumatra is of an average character. They are not absolutely degraded, nor do they enjoy an elevated position. The poorer classes labour, and all are subject to the men; but on the whole they are far superior to Java, and, in a considerable degree, to many other Eastern countries[67].

OF BORNEO.

The splendid achievements in the cause of civilization which Sir James Brooke has performed, have directed an extraordinary attention to the immense island of Borneo. Like the rest of the Indian Archipelago, it is, nevertheless, little known to the English reader--no complete accounts having been yet published. Sir James Brooke, however, with Captain Keppel, Captain Mundy, Mr. Hugh Low, and others, have thrown a new light on the country, and enabled us to discern many striking features in the social system of the races which inhabit it. The uniformity of manners observable in Celebes does not exist in Borneo. The inhabitants of Borneo, for the most part, remain in an inferior stage of the barbarian state. There are, however, among them many varieties of the social law. Some are the purest savages, wandering unclothed in the depths of the forests, and subsisting alone on the spontaneous gifts of nature. Others cultivate the soil, dwell in comfortable villages, and traffic with their neighbours. The river communities are far more advanced than those who live far from the means of water-carriage; and the inhabitants of the maritime towns are more educated, and also more profligate, than any. They have been depraved by that bloody and destructive system of piracy, which was, until recently, the curse of the Archipelago; but when Sir James Brooke’s policy has been maturely developed, we may expect to see vast ameliorations in their manners.

The state of morals among the Sea Dyaks, or dwellers on the coast, is low, even in comparison with the average of other Asiatic races. There is no social law to govern the intercourse of the youths of both sexes before marriage. Even the authority of parents is not recognised to any extent. The Dyak girl is supposed capable of selecting a husband for herself; and before she is betrothed to a man she may cohabit, without disgrace, with any other with whom she may please to associate. The women appear to make liberal use of this privilege. Loose as their conduct is, however, before marriage, they are subject afterwards to a more stringent code. As a man is only allowed one wife, he requires strict fidelity in her, and if she break faith with him, she is punished by a severe beating and a heavy fine. On his part, moreover, he must be continent, for the penalty is the same for either sex. Cases of adultery are not frequent in times of peace, though during war more licence is allowed. The Dyak women seldom engage in intrigues with Malays or other foreigners.

From their long intercourse with the Malays, who are all Mohammedans, the Dyaks might have been expected to borrow such of their customs as encourage the savage in the gratification of his animal appetites, and would enable him to live in lordly indolence on the labour of his wives. Monogamy, however, still prevails with all the tribes.

The ceremony of marriage--if such it can be called--is simple to the last degree with all except a few communities, who practise some particular rites. The consent of the woman is necessary to the match, which is made without the intervention of the parents, who, after the mutual willingness of the young people has been expressed, cannot refuse their sanction. The bride and bridegroom meet, a feast is given, and the transaction is concluded.

There are certain restrictions on the immoral intercourse of the young people, to which we have alluded. If a girl becomes pregnant, the father of her child must marry her. Such an occurrence often precedes a match. Men and women live with each other on trial, and if no signs of offspring appear, the acquaintance is discontinued. Constancy during such an intercourse is not rigidly required. Mr. Hugh Low was assured that, in some communities, the laxity of manners was carried so far, that when a chief was travelling from place to place, hospitality required that at every village he should be furnished with a girl as his companion while he rested. Such a practice is general among the Kyans who inhabit a large part of the interior of Borneo. The fear of not becoming the father of a family--a misfortune greatly dreaded by the Dyaks--is supposed to encourage the loose intercourse of the unmarried people, since, as we have said, a man always marries the woman by whom he has a child.

Among the Dyaks who dwell on the hills in the interior, a higher morality prevails. The licentious intercourse of the unmarried people is not permitted. The young and single men are obliged to sleep apart in a separate building, and the girls are carefully kept from them. Marriage is contracted at a very early age, and adultery is almost unknown. Polygamy is not allowed; but some of the chiefs indulge in a second wife or concubine--an infringement of the law which is held in great reprobation, though it cannot be prevented. The degrees of consanguinity within which marriage is prohibited extend beyond cousins. One man shocked the public feeling of his tribe by marrying his granddaughter--his wife and the girl’s mother, his own child, being still alive. The people affirmed that ruin and darkness had covered the face of the sun ever since the day when that incestuous union took place. Nevertheless, as they adhere almost constantly to the practice of marrying within their own tribe, the whole commonwealth comes, in the course of time, to be united by distant ties of blood, which has been assigned as a cause for the cases of insanity not uncommon among them. This may be true, since it is a fact that many royal families, constrained to perpetual intermarriage, have dwindled into a race of imbeciles in consequence. The women put faith in medicines to render them fruitful; but they never resort to the custom of procuring abortion adopted by the Malay prostitutes on the coast. These women eat large quantities of honey, largely mixed with hot spices, which produces the desired result. It is said that among the people of the south numerous public prostitutes are to be found, though this is on the equivocal authority of a German missionary, whose testimony is much to be suspected. No word for prostitution appears to exist in the Dyak language. Among the Malays such women are numerous.

The Sibnouan females present a fair average of the manners prevailing with the various divisions of that singular race. Their women are not concealed, nor are they shy before strangers. They will bathe naked in the presence of men; yet many of the decencies of life are observed. Though the unmarried people sleep promiscuously in a common room, married couples have separate chambers. The labour of the household, with all the drudgery, is allotted to the females; they grind rice, carry burdens, fetch water, catch fish, and till the fields, but are far from occupying the degraded condition of the wives of the North-American Indians; their situation may, indeed, be compared to that of women in the humblest classes in England. They eat with the men, and take part in their concerns as well as their festivals. This is an agricultural and fishing tribe.

Among the Kayans a naked woman cannot under any circumstances be killed, or a woman with child.

Among the Mohammedan Malays, as we have said, there is more civilization and corruption of manners in another form. They are polygamists, indulge in concubines, encourage prostitutes, and sometimes treat their wives with great tyranny. An English physician lately received a message from one of the wives of a chief--celebrated for fostering privacy--desiring a secret interview with him at a secluded spot in the jungle. He went with the high belief that the woman was enamoured of his good looks. He met her, found her young and pretty, but with an air of firmness and dignity which showed that it was no frivolous purpose which had led her to take so dangerous a step. She complained of her miserable life, of the despotism under which she suffered, declared she would endure it no longer, and requested the doctor to furnish her with a small dose of arsenic to poison, not herself, but her husband. Of course he refused, and the poor creature went away sorely disappointed.

The rich Malays allow their wives to keep female slaves for their service. The position of these captives is, under any circumstances, unenviable; should, however, one of them, by her personal qualities, excite the jealousy of her mistress; her case is miserable, until she can procure another owner. Sometimes the slaves are used as concubines, when by law they become free, though they seldom avail themselves of their liberty, preferring to be supported by their old masters, while prostituting themselves to others. The wealthy chiefs spend large sums in the purchase of concubines. The marriage ceremony is performed according to the ritual of the Koran, but is often neglected.

The prostitutes who congregate in the seaport towns have not been particularly described. They appear to be divided into classes: those who cohabit temporarily with the Malays, are paid a certain price, and exchange their residence; those who prostitute themselves indiscriminately to all comers; and those who are supported by the sailors, and profligate Chinese, who invariably create such a class wherever they settle. Of their numbers we have no account, nor of their modes of life; but it is certain they exist in considerable numbers[68].

PROSTITUTION AMONG THE SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us