complaint, all the others come to her aid.... Of course
the man is always found in the wrong; the whole village
is in a turmoil. This _esprit de corps_ demands that
every woman, whether she loves her husband or not, must
conceal her love and treat him contemptuously. It is
considered disgraceful for her to show her love to her
husband. This contempt for men goes so far that if a
wife laments the death of her husband who has died
without issue, her companions taunt her.... One often
hears women abuse their husbands or other men in the
most obscene language, even on the street, and the men
do not dare to make the least retort." "The wife can at
any time return to her mother's house, and remain there
months, sending word to her husband that he may come to
her if he cares for her."


NO CHANCE FOR ROMANTIC LOVE

The causes of this singular effeminacy of the men and masculinity of
the women are not indicated by Munzinger; but so much is clear that,
although the tables are turned, Cupid is again left in the cold. Nor
is there any romance in the courtship which leads to such hen-pecked
conjugal life:

"The children are often married very early, and engaged
earlier still. The bridegroom goes with his companions
to fetch his bride; but after having talked with her
parents he returns without having seen her. The bride
thereafter remains another whole year with her parents.
After its expiration the bridegroom sends women and a
camel to bring her to his home; she is taken away with
her tent, but the bridal escort is often fooled by the
substitution in the bride's place of another girl, who
allows herself to be taken along, carefully veiled, and
after the village has been left behind betrays herself
and runs away."

These Beni Amer are of course far superior in culture to the Bushmen,
Hottentots, Kaffirs, and West Coast peoples we have been considering
so far, having long been in contact with Oriental influences. It is
therefore as strange as it is instructive to note that as soon as a
race becomes civilized enough to feel a kind of love exalted above
mere sensuality, special pains are taken to interpose fresh obstacles,
as in the above case, where it is good form to suppress all affection,
and where a young man may not see his bride even after engagement.
This last custom seems to be of common occurrence in this part of
Africa. Munzinger (387) says of the Kunama: "As among the border
peoples engagements are often made at a very early age, after which
time bride and bridegroom avoid each other;" and again (147)
concerning the region of Massua, on the Red Sea:

"From the day of the engagement the young man is
obliged to carefully avoid the bride and her mother.
The desire to see her after the engagement is
considered very improper, and often leads to a
breaking-up of the affair. If the youth meets the girl
accidentally, she veils her face and her friends
surround her to cover her from the bridegroom's sight."


PASTORAL LOVE

These attachments are so shallow that if the fortune-teller who is
always consulted gives an unfavorable forecast, the engagement is
forthwith broken off. It is instructive to note further that the rigid
separation of a man from his betrothed serves merely to stifle
legitimate love; its object cannot be to prevent improper intimacies,
for before engagement the girls enjoy perfect liberty to do what they
please, and after engagement they may converse with _anyone except the
lover_. As Parkyns (II., 41) tells us, he is never allowed to see his
intended wife even for a moment, unless he can bribe some female
friend to arrange it so he can get a peep at her by concealing
himself; but if the girl discovers him she covers her face, screams,
runs away, and hides. This "coyness" is a pure sham. In reality the
Abyssinian girl is anything but coy. Munzinger thus describes her
character:

"The shepherd girls in the neighborhood of Massua
always earn some money by carrying water and provisions
to the city. The youngest girls are sent there
heedlessly, and are often cheated out of more than
their money, and therefore they do not usually make the
best of wives, being coquettish and very eager for
money. The refinements of innocence must not be sought
for in this country; they are incompatible with the
simple arrangement of the houses and the unrestrained
freedom of conversation. No one objects to this, a
family's only anxiety being that the girl should not
lose the semblance of virginity.... If a child is born
it is mercilessly killed by the girl's grandmother."

Sentimental admirers of what they suppose to be genuine "pastoral love
poetry" will find further food for thought in the following Abyssinian
picture from Parkyns (II., 40):

"The boys are turned out wild to look after the sheep
and cattle; and the girls from early childhood are sent
to fetch water from the well or brook, first in a
gourd, and afterward in a jar proportioned to their
strength. These occupations are not conducive to the
morality of either sex. If the well be far from the
village, the girls usually form parties to go thither,
and amuse themselves on the road by singing sentimental
or love songs, which not unfrequently verge upon the
obscene, and indulge in conversation of a similar
description; while, during their halt at the well for
an hour or so, they engage in romps of all kinds, in
which parties of the other sex frequently join. This
early license lays the foundation for the most corrupt
habits, when at a later period they are sent to the
woods to collect fuel."

James Bruce, one of the earliest Europeans to visit the Abyssinians,
describes them as living practically in a state of promiscuity,
divorce being so frequent that he once saw a woman surrounded by seven
former husbands, and there being hardly any difference between
legitimacy and illegitimacy. Another old writer, Rev. S. Gobat,
describes the Abyssinians as light-minded, having nothing constant but
inconstancy itself. A more recent writer, J. Hotten (133-35),
explains, in the following sentence, a fact which has often misled
unwary observers:

"Females are rarely gross or immodest outwardly, seeing that
they need in no way be ashamed of the freest intercourse
with the other sex," "Rape is venial, and adultery regards
only the husband."

The Christian Abyssinians are in this respect no better than
the others, regarding lewd conduct with indifference. But the most
startling exhibition of Abyssinian grossness is given by the Habab and
Mensa concerning whom Munzinger says (150), that whenever a girl
decides to give herself up to a dissolute life "a public festival is
arranged, cows are butchered and a night is spent amid song and
dances."

The four volumes of Combes and Tamisier on Abyssinia give a vivid idea
of the utter absence of sexual morality in that country. With an
intelligence rare among explorers they distinguish between love of the
senses and love of the heart, and declare that the latter is not to be
found in this country. "Abyssinian women love everybody for money and
no one gratis." They do not even suspect the possibility of any other
kind of love, and the only distinction they make is that a man who
pleases them pays less.

"But what one never finds with anyone in Abyssinia is
that refined and pure sentiment which gives so much
charm to love in Europe. Here the heart is seldom
touched; tender words are often spoken, but they are
banal and rarely sincere; never do these people
experience those extraordinary emotions of which the
very remembrance agitates us a long time, those
celestial feelings which convert an atheist into a
believer. In this country love has all its existence in
a moment, having neither a past nor a future."

The authors go so far as to doubt a story they heard of a girl who was
said to have committed suicide to escape a hated suitor forced on her;
but there is nothing improbable in this, as we know that a strong
aversion may exist even where there is no capacity for true love, and
the former by no means implies the latter. Jealousy, they found
further,

"is practically unknown in Abyssinia," "If jealousy is
manifested occasionally by women we must not deceive
ourselves regarding the nature of this feeling; when an
Abyssinienne envies the love another inspires she is jealous
only of the comfort which that love may insure for the
other" (II., Chap. V.).


ABYSSINIAN BEAUTY AND FLIRTATION

Abyssinian women are not deficient in a certain sensual kind of
beauty. Their fine figures, large black eyes, and white teeth have
been admired by many travellers. But Parkyns (II., 5) avers that
"though flowers of beauty nowhere bloom with more luxuriance than in
Aethiopia, yet, alas! there shines on them no mental sun." They make
use of their eyes to great advantage--but not to express soul-love.
What flirtation in this part of the world consists in, may be inferred
from Donaldson Smith's amusing account (245, 270) of a young Boran
girl who asked permission to accompany his caravan, offering to cook,
bring wood, etc. She was provided with a piece of white sheeting for a
dress, but when tired from marching, being unused to so much clothing,
she threw the whole thing aside and walked about naked. Her name was
Ola. Some time afterward one of the native guides began to make love
to Ola:

"I oversaw the two flirting and was highly amused at the
manner in which they went about it. It consisted almost
entirely in tickling and pinching, each sally being
accompanied by roars of laughter. They never kissed, as such
a thing is unknown in Africa."


GALLA COARSENESS

South of Abyssinia there are three peoples--the Galla, Somali, and
Harari--among some of whom, if we may believe Dr. Paulitschke, the
germs of true love are to be found. Let us briefly examine them in
turn, with Paulitschke's arguments. Hartmann (401) assigns to the
Gallas a high rank among African races, and Paulitschke (_B.z.E_.,
51-56) describes them as more intelligent than the Somali, but also
more licentious. Boys marry at sixteen to eighteen, girls at twelve to
sixteen. The women are compelled to do most of the hard work; wives
are often badly treated, and when their husbands get tired of them
they send them away. Good friends lend each other their wives, and
they also lend them to guests. If a man kills his wife no one minds
it. Few Schoa girls are virgins when they marry (_Eth. N. Afr.,_ 195),
and the married women are easily led from the path of virtue by small
presents. In other parts girls take a pride in preserving their
purity, but atone for it by a dissolute life after marriage. Brides
are subjected to an obscene examination, and if not found pure are
supposed to be legally disqualified from marriage. To avoid the
disgrace, the parents bribe the bridegroom to keep the secret, and to
assert the bride's innocence. A curious detail of Galla courtship
consists in the precautions the parents of rich youths have to take to
protect them from designing poor girls and their mothers. Often, when
the parents of a rich youth are averse to the match, the coy bride
goes to their hut, jumps over the surrounding hedge, and remains there
enduring the family's abuse until they finally accept her. To prevent
such an invasion--a sort of inverted capture, in which the woman is
the aggressor--the parents of rich sons build very high hedges round
their houses to keep out girls! Not infrequently, boys and girls are
married when only six or eight years old, and forthwith live together
as husband and wife.


SOMALI LOVE-AFFAIRS

It is among the neighbors of these Gallas that Paulitschke (30)
fancied he discovered the existence of refined love:

"Adult youths and maidens have occasion, especially
while tending the cattle, to form attachments. These
are of an idealized nature, because the young folks are
brought up in a remarkably chaste and serious manner.
The father is proud of his blooming daughter and guards
her like a treasure.... In my opinion, marriages among
the Western Somals are mostly based on cordial mutual
affection. A young man renders homage to his beloved in
song. 'Thou art beautiful,' he sings, 'thy limbs are
plump, if thou wouldst drink camel's milk thou wert
more beautiful still.' The girl, on her part, gives
expression to her longing for the absent lover in this
melancholy song: 'The camel needs good grazing, and
dislikes to leave it. My beloved has left the country.
On account of the children of Sahál (the lover's
family), my heart is always so heavy. Others throw
themselves into the ocean, but I perish from grief.
Could I but find the beloved.'"

What evidence of "idealized" love is there in these poems? The girl
expresses longing for an absent man, and longing, as we have seen,
characterizes all kinds of love from the highest to the lowest. It is
one of the selfish ingredients of love, and is therefore evidence of
self-love, not of other-love. As for the lover's poem, what is it but
the grossest sensualism, the usual African apotheosis of fat? Imagine
an American lover saying to a girl, "You are beautiful for you are
plump, but you would be more beautiful still if you ate more pork and
beans"--would she regard this as evidence of refined love, or would
she turn her back and never speak to him again? Anthropologists are
sometimes strangely naïve. We have just seen what kind of
"attachments" are formed by African youths and girls while tending
cattle; Burton adds to the evidence _(F.F_., 120) by telling us that
among the Somali "the bride, as usual in the East, is rarely
consulted, but frequent _tête-à-têtes_ at the well and in the bush
when tending cattle effectually obviate this inconvenience." "At the
wells," says Donaldson Smith (15), "you will see both sexes bathing
together, with little regard for decency." They are indeed lower than
brutes in their impulses, for the only way parents can save their
infant girls from being maltreated is by the practice of infibulation,
to which, as Paulitschke himself tells us, the girls are subjected at
the early age of four, or even three; yet, even this, he likewise
informs us, is not always effectual.

As for the father's great pride in his daughter, and his guarding her
like a treasure, that is, by the concurrent testimony of the
authorities, not a token of affection or a regard for virtue, but a
purely commercial matter. Paulitschke himself says (30) that while the
mother is devoted to her child, "the father pays no attention to it."
On the following page he adds:

"The more well-to-do the father is, and the more beautiful
his daughter, the longer he seeks to keep her under the
paternal roof, for the purpose of securing a bigger price
for her through the competition of suitors."

Of the Western Somali tribes at Zayla, Captain J.S. King says[148]
that when a man has fixed his choice on a girl he pays her father $100
to $800. After that

"the proposer is entitled (on payment of $5 each time)
to private interviews with his fiancée to enable him by
a closer inspection to judge better of her personal
charms. But it frequently happens that the young man
squanders all his money on these 'interviews' before
paying the _dafa_ agreed upon. The girl then (at her
parents' instigation) breaks off the match, and her
father, when expostulated with, replies that he will
not force his daughter's inclinations. Hence arise
innumerable breach-of-promise-of-marriage suits, in
which the man is invariably the plaintiff. I have known
instances of a girl being betrothed to three or four
different men in about a year's time, their father
receiving a certain amount of _dafa_ from each
suitor."[149]

Donaldson Smith remarks (12) that Somali women "are regarded merely as
goods and chattels. In a conversation with one of my boys he told me
that he only owned five camels, but that he had a sister from whom he
expected to get much money when he sold her in marriage." The gross
commercialism of Somali love-affairs is further illustrated by the
Ogaden custom (Paulitschke, _E.N.A._, 199) of pouring strong perfumes
over the bride in order to stimulate the ardor of the suitor and make
him willing to pay more for her--a trick which is often successful.
How, under such circumstances, Somal marriages can be "mostly based on
cordial mutual affection" is a mystery for Dr. Paulitschke to explain.
Burton proved himself a keener observer and psychologist when he wrote
(_F.F._, 122), "The Somal knows none of the exaggerated and chivalrons
ideas by which passion becomes refined affection among the Arab
Bedouins and the sons of civilization." I may add what this writer
says regarding Somal poetry:

"The subjects are frequently pastoral; the lover, for
instance, invites his mistress to walk with him toward
the well in Lahelo, the Arcadia of the land; he
compares her legs to the tall, straight Libi tree, and
imprecates the direst curses on her head if she refuses
to drink with him the milk of his favorite camel."


ARABIC INFLUENCES

The Harari, neighbors of the Somals, are another people among whom
Paulitschke fancied that he discovered signs of idealized love
(_B.E.A.S._, 70). Their youthful attachments, he says, are intense and
noble, and in proof of this he translates two of their poems on the
beauty of a bride.

I. "I tell thee this only: thy face is like silk, Aisa;
I say it again, I tell thee nothing but that. Thou art
slender as a lance-shaft; thy father and thy mother are
Arabs; they all are Arabs; I tell thee this only."

II. "Thy form is like a burning lamp, Aisa; I love
thee. When thou art at the side of Abrahim, thou
burnest him with the light of thy beauty. To-morrow I
shall see thee again."

In a third (freely translated and printed in the appendix of the same
volume) occur these lines:

"The honey is already taken out and I come with it. The
milk is already drawn and I bring it. And now thou art
the pure honey, and now thou art the fresh milk. The
gathered honey is very sweet, and therefore it was
drunk to thy health. Thine eyes are black, dyed with
Kahul. The fresh milk is very sweet and therefore it
was drunk to thy health. I have seen Sina--oh, how
sweet was Sina.... Thine eyes are like the full moon,
and thy body is fragrant as the fragrance of
rose-water. And she lives in the garden of her father
and the garments on her body become fragrant as
basil.... And thou art like a king's garden in which
all perfumes are united."

It is easy to note Arabic influences in these poems. The Harari are
largely Arabic; their very language is being absorbed in the Arabic;
yet I cannot find in these poems the least evidence of amorous
idealism or "noble" sentiment. To have a lover compare a girl's face
to silk, her form to a lance-shaft or a burning lamp, her eyes to the
full moon, may be an imaginative sort of sensualism, but it is purely
sensual nevertheless. If an American lover told a girl, "I bought some
delicious candy and ate it, thinking of you; I ordered a glass of
sweet soda-water and drank it to your health"--would she regard that
as evidence of "noble" love, or of any kind of love at all, except a
kind of cupboard love?

No, not even here, where Arabian influences prevail, do we come across
the germs of true love. It is the same all over Africa. Nowhere do we
find indications that men admire other things in women except, at
most, voluptuous eyes and plump figures; nowhere do the men perform
unselfish acts of gallantry and self-sacrifice; nowhere exhibit
sympathy with their females, who, far from being goddesses, are not
even companions, but simply drudges and slaves to lust. A whole volume
would be required to demonstrate that this holds true of all parts of
Africa; but the present chapter is already too long and I must close
with a brief reference to the Berbers of Algeria (Kabyles) to show
that at the northern extremity of Africa, as at the southern, the
eastern, the western, love spells lust. Here, too, man is lower than
animals. Camille Sabatier, who was a justice of the peace at
Tizi-Ouzan, speaks[150] of "_la brutalité du male qui, souvent même
chez les Kabyles, n'attend pas la nubilité pour déflorer la jeune
enfant._" The girls, he adds,

"detest their husbands with all their heart. Love is
almost always unknown to them--I mean by love that
ensemble of refined sentiments, which, among civilized
peoples, ennoble the sexual appetite."


TOUAREG CHIVALRY

A guileless reader of Chavanne's book on the Sahara is apt to get the
impression that there is, after all, an oasis in the desert of African
lovelessness and contempt for women. Touareg women, we are told
therein (208-10), are allowed to dispose of their hands and to eat
with the men, certain dishes being reserved for them, others
(including tea and coffee) for the men. In the evening the women
assemble and improvise songs while the men sit around in their best
attire. The women write mottoes on the men's shields, and the men
carve their chosen one's name in the rocks and sing her praises. The
situation has been compared to mediaeval chivalry. But when we examine
it more critically than the biassed Chavanne did, we find, using his
own data, more of Africa than appeared to be there at first sight. The
woman, we are informed, owes the husband obedience, and he can divorce
her at pleasure. When a woman talks to a man she veils her face "as a
sign of respect." And when the men travel, they are accompanied by
those of their female slaves who are young and pretty. Their morals
are farther characterized by the fact that descent is in the female
line, which is usually due to uncertain paternity. The women are ugly
and masculine, and Chavanne does not mention a single fact or act
which proves that they experience supersensual, altruistic love.

So far as the position of Touareg women is superior to that of other
Africans, it is due to the fact that slaves are kept to do the hard
work and to certain European and Christian influences and the
institution of theoretical monogamy. Possibly the germs of a better
sort of love may exist among them, as they may among the Bedouins;
they must make a beginning somewhere.


AN AFRICAN LOVE-LETTER

T.J. Hutchinson declares that the gentle god of love is unknown in the
majority of African kingdoms: "It in fact seems to be crawling into
life only in one or two places where our language is the established
one." He prints a quaint love-letter addressed by a Liberian native to
his colored sweetheart. The substance of the letter, it is true, is
purely egotistic; it might be summed up in the words, "Oh, how I wish
you were here to make me happy." Yet it opens up vistas of future
possibilities. I cite it verbatim:

"My Dear Miss,--I take my pen in hand to Embrac you of
my health, I was very sick this morning but know I am
better but I hope it may find you in a state of
Enjoying good health and so is your Relation. Oh my
dear Miss what would I give if I could see thy lovely
Face this precious minnit O miss you had promis me to
tell me something, and I like you to let you know I am
very anxious to know what it is give my Respect to the
young mens But to the young ladys especially O I am
long to see you O miss if I don't see you shortly
surely I must die I shut my mouth to hold my breath
Miss don't you cry O my little pretty turtle dove I
wont you to write to me, shall I go Bound or shall I go
free or shall I love a pretty girl a she don't love me
give my Respect all enquiring Friend Truly Your
respectfully,

"J----H----

"Nothing more to say O miss."


ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN LOVE

The founders of the Australian race, Curr believes, were Africans, and
may have arrived in one canoe. The distance from Africa to Australia
is, however, great, and there are innumerable details of structure,
color, custom, myth, implements, language, etc., which have led the
latest authorities to conclude that the Australian race was formed
gradually by a mixture of Papuans, Malayans, and Dravidians of Central
India.[151] Topinard has given reasons for believing that there are
two distinct races in Australia. However that may be, there are
certainly great differences in the customs of the natives. As regards
the relations of the sexes, luckily, these differences are not so
great as in some other respects, wherefore it is possible to give a
tolerably accurate bird's-eye view of the Australians as a whole from
this point of view.


PERSONAL CHARMS OF AUSTRALIANS

Once in awhile, in the narrative of those who have travelled or
sojourned among Australians, one comes across a reference to the
symmetrical form, soft skin, red lips, and white teeth of a young
Australian girl. Mitchell in his wanderings saw several girls with
beautiful features and figures. Of one of these, who seemed to be the
most influential person in camp, he says (I., 266):

"She was now all animation, and her finely shaped mouth,
beautiful teeth, and well-formed person appeared to great
advantage as she hung over us both, addressing me
vehemently,"

etc. Of two other girls the same writer says (II., 93):

"The youngest was the handsomest female I had ever seen
amongst the natives. She was so far from black that the
red color was very apparent in her cheeks. She sat
before me in a corner of the group, nearly in the
attitude of Mr. Bailey's fine statue of Eve at the
fountain, and apparently equally unconscious that she
was naked. As I looked upon her for a moment, while
deeply regretting the fate of her mother, the chief,
who stood by, and whose hand had been more than once
laid upon my cap, as if to feel whether it were proof
against the blow of a waddy, begged me to accept of her
in exchange for a tomahawk!"

Eyre, another famous early traveller, writes on this topic (II.,
207-208):

"Occasionally, though rarely, I have met with females
in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs
and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for
the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the
females are, except in early youth, very far inferior
to the men. When young, however, they are not
uninteresting. The jet black eyes, shaded by their long
dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely formed
features of incipient womanhood give a soft and
pleasing expression to a countenance that might often
be called good-looking--occasionally pretty."

"Occasionally, though rarely," and then only for a few years, is an
Australian woman attractive from _our_ point of view. As a rule she is
very much the reverse--dirty, thin-limbed, course-featured, ungainly
in every way;[152] and Eyre tells us why this is so. The extremities
of the women, he says, are more attenuated than those of the men;
probably because "like most other savages, the Australian looks upon
his wife as a slave," makes her undergo great privations and do all
the hard work, such as bringing in wood and water, tending the
children, carrying all the movable property while on the march, _often
even her husband's weapons_:

"In wet weather she attends to all the outside work,
whilst her lord and master is snugly seated at the
fire. If there is a scarcity of food, she has to endure
the pangs of hunger, often, perhaps, in addition to
ill-treatment and abuse. No wonder, then, that the
females, and especially the younger ones (for it is
then they are exposed to the greatest hardships), are
not so fully or so roundly developed in person as the
men."

The rule that races admire those personal characteristics which
climate and circumstances have impressed on them is not borne out
among Australians. An arid soil and a desiccating climate make them
thin as a race, but they do not admire thinness. "Long-legged,"
"thin-legged," are favorite terms of abuse among them, and Grey once
heard a native sing scornfully

Oh, what a leg,

*        *        *        *        *

You kangaroo-footed churl!

Nor is it beauty, in our sense of the word, that attracts them, but
fat, as in Africa and the Orient. I have previously quoted Brough
Smyth's assertion that an Australian woman, however old and ugly, is
in constant danger of being stolen if she is fat. That women have the
same standard of "taste," appears from the statement of H.E.A. Meyer
(189), that the principal reason why the men anoint themselves with
grease and ochre is that it makes them look fat and "gives them an air
of importance in the eyes of the women, for they admire a fat man
however ugly." But whereas these men admire a fat woman for sensual
reasons, the women's preference is based on utilitarian motives. Low
as their reasoning powers are, they are shrewd enough to reflect that
a man who is in good condition proves thereby that he is
"somebody"--that he can hunt and will be able to bring home some meat
for his wife too. This interpretation is borne out by what was said on
a previous page (278) about one of the reasons why corpulence is
valued in Fiji, and also by an amusing incident related by the eminent
Australian explorer George Grey (II., 93). He had reproached his
native guide with not knowing anything, when the guide replied:

"I know nothing! I know how to keep myself fat; the
young women look at me and say, 'Imbat is very
handsome, he is fat'--they will look at you and say,
'He not good--long legs--what do you know? Where is
your fat? What for do you know so much, if you can't
keep fat?"


CRUEL TREATMENT OF WOMEN

Eyre was no doubt right in his suggestion that the inferiority of
Australian women to the men in personal appearance was due to the
privations and hardships to which the women were subjected. Much as
the men admire fat in a woman, they are either too ignorant, or too
selfish otherwise, to allow them to grow fat in idleness. Women in
Australia never exist for their own sake but solely for the
convenience of the men. "The man," says the Rev. H.E.A. Meyer (11),
"regarding them more as slaves than in any other light, employs them
in every possible way to his own advantage." "The wives were the
absolute property of the husband," says the Rev. G. Taplin (XVII. to
XXXVII.),

"and were given away, exchanged, or lent, as their owners
saw fit." "The poor creatures ... are always seen to a
disadvantage, being ... the slaves of their husbands and of
the tribes." "The women in all cases came badly off when
they depended upon what the men of the tribes chose to give
them."

"The woman is an absolute slave. She is treated with the
greatest cruelty and indignity, has to do all laborious
work, and to carry all the burthens. For the slightest
offence or dereliction of duty, she is beaten with a waddy
or a yam-stick, and not unfrequently speared. The records of
the Supreme Court in Adelaide furnish numberless instances
of blacks being tried for murdering their lubras. The
woman's life is of no account if her husband chooses to
destroy it, and no one ever attempts to protect or take her
part under any circumstances. In times of scarcity of food,
she is the last to be fed and the last considered in any
way. That many of them die in consequence cannot be a matter
of wonder.... The condition of the women has no influence
over their treatment, and a pregnant female is dealt with
and is expected to do as much as if she were in perfect
health.... The condition of the native women is wretched and
miserable in the extreme; in fact, in no savage nation of
which there is any record can it be any worse."

And again (p. 72):

"The men think nothing of thrashing their wives,
knocking them on the head, and inflicting frightful
gashes; but they never beat the boys. And the sons
treat their mothers very badly. Very often mere lads
will not hesitate to strike and throw stones at them."

"Women," says Eyre (322), "are frequently beaten about the head with
waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the
most trivial offences."

There is hardly one, he says, that has not some frightful
scars on the body; and he saw one who "appeared to have been
almost riddled with spear-wounds." "Does a native meet a
woman in the woods and violate her, he is not the one to
feel the vengeance of the husband, but the poor victim whom
he has abused" (387). "Women surprised by strange blacks are
always abused and often massacred" (Curr, I., 108). "A black
hates intensely those of his own race with whom he is
unacquainted, always excepting the females. To one of these
he will become attached if he succeeds in carrying one off;
otherwise he will kill the women out of mere savageness and
hatred of their husbands" (80). "Whenever they can, blacks
in their wild state never neglect to massacre all male
strangers who fall into their power. Females are ravished,
and often slain afterward if they cannot be conveniently
carried off."

The natives of Victoria "often break to pieces their six-feet-long
sticks on the heads of the women" (Waitz, VI., 775). "In the case of a
man killing his own gin [wife], he has to deliver up one of his own
sisters for his late wife's friends to put to death" (W.E. Roth, 141).
After a war, when peace is patched up, it sometimes happens that "the
weaker party give some nets and women to make matters up" (Curr, II.,
477). In the same volume (331) we find a realistic picture of
masculine selfishness at home:

"When the mosquitoes are bad, the men construct with
forked sticks driven into the ground rude bedsteads, on
which they sleep, a fire being made underneath to keep
off with its smoke the troublesome insects. No
bedsteads, however, fall to the share of the women,
whose business it is to keep the fires burning whilst
their lords sleep."

Concerning woman in the lower Murray tribes, Bulmer says[153] that "on
the journey her lord would coolly walk along with merely his war
implements, weighing only a few pounds, while his wife was carrying
perhaps sixty pounds."

The lives of the women "are rated as of the less value than those of
the men." "Their corpses are often thrown to dogs for food" (Waitz,
VL, 775). "These poor creatures," says Wilkinson of the South
Australian women (322),

"are in an abject state, and are only treated with about the
same consideration as the dogs that accompany them; they are
obliged to give any food that may be desired to the men, and
sit and see them eat it, considering themselves amply repaid
if they are rewarded by having a piece of gizzle, or any
other leavings, pitched to them."

J.S. Wood (71) relates this characteristic story:

"A native servant was late in keeping his appointment
with his master, and, on inquiry, it was elicited that
he had just quarrelled with one of his wives, and had
speared her through the body. On being rebuked by his
master, he turned off the matter with a laugh, merely
remarking that white men had only one wife, whereas he
had two, and did not mind losing one till he could buy
another."

Sturt. who made two exploring expeditions (1829-1831), wrote (II., 55)
that the men oblige their women to procure their own food, or they
"throw to them over their shoulders the bones they have already
picked, with a nonchalance that is extremely amusing." The women are
also excluded from religious ceremonies; many of the best things to