matter of fact, the scant Fijian attire has nothing to do with
modesty; quite the contrary. Williams says (147) "that young unmarried
women wear a _liku_ little more than a hand's breadth in depth, which
does not meet at the hips by several inches;" and Seeman writes (168)
that Fijian girls

"wore nothing but a girdle of hibiscus fibres, about six
inches wide, dyed black, red, yellow, white, or brown, and
put on in such a coquettish way that one thought it must
come off every moment."

Westermarck, with whom for once we can agree, justly observes
(190) that such a costume "is far from being in harmony with our ideas
of modesty," and that its real purpose is to attract attention. As
elsewhere among such peoples the matter is strictly regulated by
fashion. "Both sexes," says Williams (143), "go unclad until the tenth
year and some beyond that. Chiefs' children are kept longest without
dress." Any deviation from a local custom, however ludicrous that
custom may be, seems to barbarians punishable and preposterous. Thus,
a Fijian priest whose sole attire consisted in a loin-cloth (_masi_)
exclaimed on hearing of the gods of the naked New Hebrideans: "Not
possessed of masi and pretend to have gods!"

The alleged chastity of Fijians is as illusive as their modesty. Girls
who had been betrothed as infants were carefully guarded, and adultery
savagely punished by clubbing or strangling; but, as I made clear in
the chapter on jealousy, such vindictive punishment does not indicate
a regard for chastity, but is merely revenge for infringement on
property rights. The national custom permitting a man whose conjugal
property had been molested to retaliate by subjecting the culprit's
wife to the same treatment in itself indicates an utter absence of the
notion of chastity as a virtue. Like the Papuan, Melanesian, and
Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific Islands in general, the Fijians
were utterly licentious. Young women, says Williams (145) are the
victims of man's lust;

"all the evils of the most licentious sensuality are
found among this people. In the case of the chiefs,
these are fully carried out, and the vulgar follow as
far as their means will allow. But here, even at the
risk of making the picture incomplete, there may not be
given a faithful representation" (115).

When a band of warriors returns victorious, they are met by the women;
but "the words of the women's song may not be translated; nor are the
obscene gestures of their dance, in which the young virgins are
compelled to take part, or the foul insults offered to the corpses of
the slain, fit to be described.... On these occasions the ordinary
social restrictions are destroyed, and the unbridled and
indiscriminate indulgence of every evil lust and passion completes the
scene of abomination" (43). Yet,

"voluntary breach of the marriage contract is rare in
comparison with that which is enforced, as, for
instance, when the chief gives up the women of a town
to a company of visitors or warriors. Compliance with
this mandate is compulsory, but should the woman
conceal it from her husband, she would be severely
punished" (147).


EMOTIONAL CURIOSITIES

When Williams adds to the last sentence that "fear prevents
unfaithfulness more than affection, though I believe that instances of
the latter are numerous," we must not allow ourselves to be deceived
by a word. Fijian "affection" is a thing quite different from the
altruistic feeling we mean by the word. It may in a wife assume the
form of a blind attachment, like that of a dog to a cruel master, but
is not likely to go beyond that, since even the most primitive love
between parents and children is confessedly shallow, transient, or
entirely absent. Williams (154, 142) "noticed cases beyond number
where natural affection was wanting on both sides;" two-thirds of the
offspring are killed, "such children as are allowed to live are
treated with a foolish fondness"--and fondness is, as we have seen,
not an altruistic but an egoistic feeling. In writing about Fijian
friendships our author says (117):

"The high attainments which constitute friendship are known
to very few.... Full-grown men, it is true, will walk about
together, hand in hand, with boyish kindliness, or meet with
hugs and embraces; but their love, though specious, is
hardly real."

Obviously the keen-eyed missionary here had in mind the distinction
between sentimentality and sentiment. Sentimentality of a most
extraordinary kind is also found in the attitude of sons toward
parents. A Fijian considered it a mark of affection to club an aged
parent (157), and Williams has seen the breast of a ferocious savage
heave and swell with strong emotion on bidding a temporary farewell to
his aged father, whom he afterward strangled (117). Such are the
emotions of barbarians--shallow, fickle, capricious--as different from
our affection as a brook which dries up after every shower is from the
deep and steady current of a river which dispenses its beneficent
waters even in a drought.


FIJIAN LOVE-POEMS

In his article on Fijian poetry, referred to in the chapter on
Coyness, Sir Arthur Gordon informs us that among the "sentimental"
class of poems "there are not a few which are licentious, and many
more which, though not open to that reproach, are coarse and indecent
in their plain-spokenness." Others of the love-songs, he declares,
have "a ring of true feeling very unlike what is usually found in
similar Polynesian compositions, and which may be searched for in vain
in Gill's _Songs of the Pacific_." These songs, he adds, "more nearly
resemble European love-songs than any with which I am acquainted among
other semi-savage races;" and he finds in them "a ring of true passion
as if of love arising not from mere animal instinct but intelligent
association." I for my part cannot find in them even a hint at
supersensual altruistic sentiment. To give the reader a chance to
judge for himself I cite the following:


I

_He_.--I seek my lady in the house when the breeze blows,
I say to her, "Arrange the house, unfold the mats, bring the pillows,
sit down and let us talk together."

I say "Why do you provoke me? Be sure men despise coquetry such as
yours, though they disguise from you the scorn they feel. Nay, be
not angry; grant me to hold thy fairly tattooed hand. I am
distracted with love. I would fain weep if I could move thee to
tears."

_She_.--You are cruel, my love, and perverse. To think thus much of an
idle jest.
The setting sun bids all repose. Night is nigh.

II

I lay till dawn of day, peacefully asleep,
But when the sun rose, I rose too and ran without.
I hastily gathered the sweetest flowers I could find, shaking them
from the branches.
I came near the dwelling of my love with my sweet scented burden.
As I came near she saw me, and called playfully,
"What birds are you flying here so early?"
"I am a handsome youth and not a bird," I replied,
"But like a bird I am mateless and forlorn."
She took a garland of flowers off her neck and gave it to me
I in return gave her my comb; I threw it to her and ah me! it strikes
her face!
"What rough bark of a tree are you made from?" she cries. And so
saying she turned and went away in anger.


III

In the mountain war of 1876 there was in the native force on the
government side a handsome lad of the name of Naloko, much admired by
the ladies. One day, all the camp and the village of Nasauthoko were
found singing this song, which someone had composed:

"The wind blows over the great mountain of Magondro,
It blows among the rocks of Magondro.
The same wind plays in and raises the yellow locks of
Naloko.
Thou lovest me, Naloko, and to thee I am devoted,
Shouldst thou forsake me, sleep would forever forsake me.
Shouldst thou enfold another in thine arms,
All food would be to me as the bitter root of the via.
The world to me would become utterly joyless
Without thee, my handsome, slender waisted,
Strong-shouldered, pillar-necked lad."


SERENADES AND PROPOSALS

At the time when Williams studied the Fijians, their poetry consisted
of dirges, serenades, wake-songs, war-songs, and hymns for the dance
(99). Of love-songs addressed to individuals he says nothing. The
serenades do not come under that head, since, as he says (140), they
are practised at night "by _companies_ of men and women"--which takes
all the romance out of them. One detail of the romance of courtship
had, however, been introduced even in his time, through European
influence. "Popping the question" is, he says, of recent date, "and
though for the most part done by the men, yet the women do not
hesitate to adopt the same course when so inclined." No violent
individual preference seems to be shown. The following is a specimen
of a man's proposal.

Simioni Wang Ravou, wishing to bring the woman he wanted to a
decision, remarked to her, in the hearing of several other persons:

"I do not wish to have you because you are a good-looking
woman; that you are not. But a woman is like a necklace of
flowers--pleasant to the eye and grateful to the smell: but
such a necklace does not long continue attractive; beautiful
as it is one day, the next it fades and loses its scent. Yet
a pretty necklace tempts one to ask for it, but, if refused
no one will often repeat his request. If you love me, I love
you; but if not, neither do I love you: let it be a settled
thing" (150).


SUICIDES AND BACHELORS

Hearts are not likely to be broken by a refusal under such
circumstances, which bears out Williams's remark (148) that no
distinctive preference is apparent among these men and women. Under
such circumstances it may appear strange that some widowers should
commit suicide upon the death of a wife, as Seernan assures us they do
(193). Does not this indicate deep feeling? Not in a savage. In all
countries suicide is usually a sign of a weak intellect rather than of
strong feelings, and especially is this the case among the lower
races, where both men and women are apt to commit suicide in a moment
of excitement, often for the most trivial cause, as we shall see in
the next chapter. Williams tells us (106) of a chief on Thithia who
was addressed disrespectfully by a younger brother and who, rather
than live to have the insult made the topic of common talk, loaded his
musket, placed the muzzle at his breast, and pushing the trigger with
his toe, shot himself through the heart. He knew a similar case on
Vanua Levu.

"Pride and anger combined often lead to self-destruction.
... The most common method of suicide in Fiji is by jumping
over a precipice. This is, among the women, the fashionable
way of destroying themselves; but they sometimes resort to
the rope. Of deadly poisons they are ignorant, and drowning
would be a difficult thing; for from infancy they learn to
be almost as much at home in the water as on dry land."

In his book on the Melanesians Codrington says (243) that

"a wife jealous of her husband, or in any way incensed at
him, would in former times throw herself from a cliff or
tree, swim out to sea, hang or strangle herself, stab
herself with an arrow, or thrust one down her throat; and a
man jealous or quarrelling with his wife would do the like;
but now it is easy to go off with another's wife or husband
in a labor vessel to Queensland or Fiji."

There is one class of men in Fiji who are not likely to commit
suicide. They are the bachelors, who, though they are scorned and
frowned on in this life, must look forward to a worse fate after
death. There is a special god, named Nangganangga--"the bitter hater
of bachelors"--who watches for their souls, and so untiring is his
watch, as Williams was informed (206), that no unwedded spirit has
ever reached the Elysium of Fiji. Sly bachelors sometimes try to dodge
him by stealing around the edge of a certain reef at low tide; but he
is up to their tricks, seizes them and dashes them to pieces on the
large black stone, just as one shatters rotten fire-wood.


SAMOAN TRAITS

Cruel and degraded as the Fijians are, they mark a considerable
advance over the Australian savages. A further advance is to be noted
as we come to the Samoans. Cannibalism was indulged in occasionally in
more remote times, but not, as in Fiji, owing to a relish for human
flesh, but merely as a climax of hatred and revenge. To speak of
roasting a Samoan chief is a deadly insult and a cause for war
(Turner, 108). Sympathy was a feeling known to Samoans; their
treatment of the sick was invariably humane (141). And whereas in
Australia, Borneo, and Fiji, it is just as honorable to slay a female
as a male, Samoans consider it cowardly to kill a woman (196). Nor do
they practise infanticide; but this abstinence is counterbalanced by
the fact that the custom of destroying infants before birth prevailed
to a melancholy extent (79).

Yet here as everywhere we discover that the sexual refinement on which
the capacity for supersensual love depends comes last of the virtues.
The Rev. George Turner, who had forty years of experience among the
Polynesians, writes (125) that at their dances "all kinds of obscenity
in looks, language, and gesture prevailed; and often they danced and
revelled till daylight." The universal custom of tattooing was
connected with immoral practices (90). During the wedding ceremonies
of chiefs the friends of the bride

"took up stones and beat themselves until their heads
were bruised and bleeding. The ceremony to prove her
virginity which preceded this burst of feeling will not
bear the light of description.... Night dances and the
attendant immoralities wound up the ceremonies."

The same obscene ceremonies, he adds, were gone through, and this
custom, he thinks, had some influence in cultivating chastity,
especially among young women of rank who feared the disgrace and
beating that was the lot of faithless brides. Presents were also given
to those who had preserved their virtue; but the result of these
efforts is thus summed up by Turner (91):

"Chastity was ostensibly cultivated by both sexes; but it
was more a name than a reality. From their childhood their
ears were familiar with the most obscene conversation; and
as a whole family, to some extent, herded together,
immorality was the natural and prevalent consequence. There
were exceptions, especially among the daughters of persons
of rank; but they were the exceptions, not the rule.
Adultery, too, was sadly prevalent, although often severely
punished by private revenge."

When a chief took a wife, the bride's uncle or other relative had to
give up a daughter at the same time to be his concubine; to refuse
this, would have been to displease the household god. A girl's consent
was a matter of secondary importance: "She had to agree if her parents
were in favor of the match." Many marriages were made chiefly for the
sake of the attendant festivities, the bride being compelled to go
whether or not she was willing. In this way a chief might in a short
time get together a harem of a dozen wives; but most of them remained
with him only a short time:

"If the marriages had been contracted merely for the sake of
the property and festivities of the occasion, the wife was
not likely to be more than a few days or weeks with her
husband."


COURTSHIP PANTOMIME

Elopements occur in Samoa in some cases where parental consent is
refused. A vivid description of the pantomimic courtship preceding an
elopement has been given by Kubary (_Globus_, 1885). A young warrior
is surrounded by a bevy of girls. Though unarmed, he makes various
gestures as if spearing or clubbing an enemy, for which the girls
cheer him.

He then selects one, who at first seems coyly unwilling, and begins a
dance with her. She endeavors to look indifferent and forbidding,
while he, with longing looks and words, tries to win her regard.
Presently, yielding to his solicitations, she smiles, and opens her
arms for him. But he, foolishly, stops to reproach her for holding him
off so long. He shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and lo! when he gets
ready to grasp her at last, she eludes him again, with a mocking
laugh.

It is now his turn to be perverse. Revenge is in his mind and mien.
All his looks and gestures indicate contempt and malice, and he keeps
turning his back to her. She cannot endure this long; his scorn
overcomes her pride, and when he changes his attitude and once more
begins to entreat, she at last allows him to seize her and they dance
wildly. When finally the company separates for the evening meal, one
may hear the word _tóro_ whispered. It means "cane," and indicates a
nocturnal rendezvous in the cane-field, where lovers are safe from
observation. They find each other by imitating the owl's sound, which
excites no suspicion.

When they have met, the girl says: "You know that my parents hate you;
nothing remains but _awenga_." Awenga means flight; three nights later
they elope in a canoe to some small island, where they remain for a
few weeks till the excitement over their disappearance has subsided in
the village and their parents are ready to pardon them.


TWO SAMOAH LOVE-STORIES

Turner devotes six pages (98-104) to two Samoan love-stories. One of
them illustrates the devotion of a wife and her husband's ingratitude
and faithlessness, as the following summary will show:

There was a youth called Siati, noted for his singing. A
serenading god came along, threw down a challenge, and
promised him his fair daughter if he was the better singer.
They sang and Siati beat the god. Then he rode on a shark to
the god's home and the shark told him to go to the
bathing-place, where he would find the god's daughters. The
girls had just left the place when Siati arrived, but one of
them had forgotten her comb and came back to get it.
"Siati," said she, "however have you come here?" "I've come
to seek the song-god and get his daughter to wife." "My
father," said she, "is more of a god than man--eat nothing
he hands you, never sit on a high seat lest death should
follow, and now let us unite."

The god did not like his son-in-law and tried various ways
to destroy him, but his wife Puapae always helped him out of
the scrape, one time even making him cut her into two and
throw her into the sea to be eaten by a fish and find a ring
the god had lost and asked him to get. She was afterward
cast ashore with the ring; but Siati had not even kept
awake, and she scolded him for it. To save his life, she
subsequently performed several other miracles, in one of
which her father and sister were drowned in the sea. Then
she said to Siati: "My father and sister are dead, and all
on account of my love to you; you may go now and visit your
family and friends while I remain here, but see that you do
not behave unseemly." He went, visited his friends, and
forgot Puapae. He tried to marry again, but Puapae came and
stood on the other side. The chief called out, "Which is
your wife, Siati?" "The one on the right side." Puapae then
broke silence with, "Ah, Siati, you have forgotten all I did
for you;" and off she went. Siati remembered it all, darted
after her crying, and then fell down dead.

Apart from the amusing "suddenness" of the proposal and the marriage,
this tale is of interest as indicating that among the lower races
woman has--as many observations indicate--a greater capacity for
conjugal attachment than man.

The courtship scene cited above indicates an instinctive knowledge of
the strategic value of coyness and feigned displeasure. The following
story, which I condense from the versified form in which Turner gives
it, would seem to be a sort of masculine warning to women against the
danger and folly of excessive coyness, so inconvenient to the men:

Once there were two sisters, Sinaleuuna and Sinaeteva, who
wished they had a brother. Their wish was gratified; a boy
was born to their parents, but they brought him up apart,
and the sisters never saw him till one day, when he had
grown up, he was sent to them with some food. The girls were
struck with his beauty.

Afterwards they sat down and filled into a bamboo bottle the
liquid shadow of their brother. A report had come to them of
Sina, a Fijian girl who was so beautiful that all the swells
were running after her. Hearing this, and being anxious to
get a wife for their brother, they dressed up and went to
Fiji, intending to tell Sina about their brother. But Sina
was haughty; she slighted the sisters and treated them
shamefully. She had heard of the beauty of the young man,
whose name was Maluafiti ("Shade of Fiji"), and longed for
his coming, but did not know that these were his sisters.

The slighted girls got angry and went to the water when Sina
was taking her bath. From the bottle they threw out on the
water the shadow of their brother. Sina looked at the shadow
and was struck with its beauty. "That is my husband," she
said, "wherever I can find him." She called out to the
villagers for all the handsome young men to come and find
out of whom the figure in the water was the image. But the
shadow was more beautiful than any of these young men and it
wheeled round and round in the water whenever Maluafiti, in
his own land, turned about. All this time the sisters were
weeping and exclaiming:

"Oh, Maluafiti! rise up, it is day;
Your shadow prolongs our ill-treatment.
Maluafiti, come and talk with her face to face,
Instead of that image in the water."

Sina had listened, and now she knew it was the shadow of
Maluafiti. "These are his sisters too," she thought, "and I
have been ill-using them; forgive me, I've done wrong," But
the ladies were angry still. Maluafiti came in his canoe to
court Lady Sina, and also to fetch his sisters. When they
told him of their treatment he flew into an implacable rage.
Sina longed to get him; he was her heart's desire and long
she had waited for him. But Maluafiti frowned and would
return to his island, and off he went with his sisters. Sina
cried and screamed, and determined to follow swimming. The
sisters pleaded to save and to bring her, but Maluafiti
relented not and Sina died in the ocean.


PERSONAL CHARMS OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS

"Falling in love" with a person of the other sex on the mere report of
his or her beauty is a very familiar motive in the literature of
Oriental and mediaeval nations in particular. It is, therefore,
interesting to find such a motive in the Samoan story just cited. In
my view, as previously explained, beauty, among the lower races, means
any kind of attractiveness, sensual more frequently than esthetic. The
South Sea Islanders have been credited with considerable personal
charms, although it is now conceded that the early voyagers (to whom,
after an absence from shore of several months, almost any female must
have seemed a Helen) greatly exaggerated their beauty.

Captain Cook kept a level head. He found Tongan women less
distinguished from the men by their features than by their forms,
while in the case of Hawaiians even the figures were remarkably
similar (II., 144, 246). In Tahitian women he saw "all those delicate
characteristics which distinguish them from the men in other
countries." The Hawaiians, though far from being ugly, are "neither
remarkable for a beautiful shape, nor for striking features" (246).

The indolent, open-air, amphibious life led by the South Sea Islanders
was favorable to the development of fine bodies. Cook saw among the
Tongans "some absolutely perfect models of the human figure." But fine
feathers do not make fine birds. The nobler phases of love are not
inspired by fine figures so much as by beautiful and refined faces.
Polynesian and Melanesian features are usually coarse and sensual.
Hugo Zoller says that "the most beautiful Samoan woman would stand
comparison at best with a pretty German peasant girl;" and from my own
observations at Honolulu, and a study of many photographs, I conclude
that what he says applies to the Pacific Islanders in general. Edward
Reeves, in his recent volume on _Brown Men and Women_ (17-22), speaks
of "that fraud--the beautiful brown woman." He found her a "dream of
beauty and refinement" only in the eyes of poets and romancers; in
reality they were malodorous and vulgar. "All South Sea Island women
are very much the same."

"To compare the prettiest Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian, or even
Rotuman, to the plainest and most simply educated Irish,
French, or Colonial girl that has been decently brought up
is an insult to one's intelligence."

Wilkes (II., 22) hesitated to speak of the Tahitian females because he
could not discover their much-vaunted beauty:

"I did not see among them a single woman whom I could call
handsome. They have, indeed, a soft sleepiness about the
eyes, which may be fascinating to some, but I should rather
ascribe the celebrity their charms have obtained among
navigators to their cheerfulness and gaiety. Their figures
are bad, and the greater part of them are parrot-toed."


TAHITIANS AND THEIR WHITE VISITORS

Tongan girls are referred to in Reeves's book as "bundles of blubber."
It is not necessary to refer once more to the fact that "blubber" is
the criterion and ideal of "beauty" among the Pacific Islanders, as
among barbarians in general. Consequently their love cannot have been
ennobled by any of the refined, esthetic, intellectual, and moral
qualities which are embodied in a refined face and a daintily modelled
figure.

Coarsest of all the Polynesians were the Tahitians; yet even here
efforts have been made[186] to convey the impression that they owed
their licentious practices to the influence of white visitors. The
grain of truth in this assertion lies in the undoubted fact that the
whites, with their rum and trinkets and diseases, aggravated the evil;
but their contribution was but a drop in the ocean of iniquity which
existed ages before these islands were discovered by whites. Tahitian
traditions trace their vilest practices back to the earliest times
known. (Ellis, I., 183.) The first European navigators found the same
vices which later visitors deplored. Bougainville, who tarried at
Tahiti in 1767, called the island Nouvelle Cythère, on account of the
general immorality of the natives. Cook, when he visited the island in
the following year, declined to make his journal "the place for
exhibiting a view of licentious manners which could only serve to
disgust" his readers (212). Hawkesworth relates (II., 206) that the
Tahitians offered sisters and daughters to strangers, while breaches
of conjugal fidelity are punished only by a few hard words or a slight
beating:

"Among other diversions there is a dance called Timorodee,
which is performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of
them can be collected together, consisting of motions and
gestures beyond imagination wanton, in the practice of which
they are brought up from their earliest childhood,
accompanied by words which, if it were possible, would more
explicitly convey the same ideas." "But there is a scale in
dissolute sensuality, which these people have ascended,
wholly unknown to every other nation whose manners have been
recorded from the beginning of the world to the present
hour, and which no imagination could possibly conceive."

This is the testimony of the earliest explorers who saw the natives
before whites could have possibly corrupted them.[187] The later
missionaries found no change for the better. Captain Cook already
referred to the Areois who made a business of depravity (220). "So
agreeable," he wrote,

"is this licentious plan of life to their disposition, that
the most beautiful of both sexes thus commonly spend their
youthful days, habituated to the practice of enormities
which would disgrace the most savage tribes."

Ellis, who lived several years on this island, declares that they were
noted for their humor and their jests, but the jests

"were in general low and immoral to a disgusting degree....
Awfully dark, indeed, was their moral character, and
notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition,
and the cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion
of the human race was ever, perhaps, sunk lower in brutal
licentiousness and moral degradation than this isolated
people" (87).

He also describes the Areois (I., 185-89) as "privileged libertines,"
who travelled from place to place giving improper dances and
exhibitions, "addicted to every kind of licentiousness," and
"spreading a moral contagion throughout society," Yet they were "held
in the greatest respect" by all classes of the population. They had
their own gods, who were "monsters in vice," and "patronized every
evil practice perpetrated during such seasons of public festivity."

Did the white sailors also give the Tahitians their idea of Tahitian
dances, and professional Areois, and corrupt gods? Did they teach them
customs which Hawkesworth, himself a sailor, and accustomed to scenes
of low life, said "no imagination could possibly conceive?" Did the
European whites teach these natives to regard men as _ra_ (sacred) and
women as _noa_ (common)? Did they teach them all those other customs
and atrocities which the following paragraphs reveal?


HEARTLESS TREATMENT OF WOMEN

It can be shown that quite apart from their sensuality, the Tahitians
were too coarse and selfish to be able to entertain any of those
refined sentiments of love which the sentimentalists would have us
believe prevailed before the advent of the white man.

Love is often compared to a flower; but love cannot, like a flower,
grow on a dunghill. It requires a pure, chaste soul, and it requires
the fostering sunshine of sympathy and adoration. To a Tahitian a
woman was merely a toy to amuse him. He liked her as he liked his food
and drink, or his cool plunge into the waves, for the reason that she
pleased his senses. He could not feel sentimental love for her, since,
far from adoring her, he did not even respect or well-treat her. Ellis
(I., 109) relates that

"The men were allowed to eat the flesh of the pig, and of
fowls, and a variety of fish, cocoanuts, and plantains, and
whatever was presented as an offering to the gods; these the
females, on pain of death, were forbidden to touch, as it
was supposed they would pollute them. The fires at which the
men's food was cooked were also sacred, and were forbidden
to be used by the females. The baskets in which their
provision was kept, and the house in which the men ate, were
also sacred, and prohibited to the females under the same
cruel penalty. Hence the inferior food, both for wives,
daughters, etc., was cooked at separate fires, deposited in
distinct baskets, and eaten in lonely solitude by the
females, in little huts erected for the purpose."

Not content with this, when one man wished to abuse another in a
particularly offensive way he would use some expression referring to
this degraded condition of the women, such as "mayst thou be baked as
food for thy mother." Young children were deliberately taught to
disregard their mother, the father encouraging them in their insults
and violence (205). Cook (220) found that Tahitian women were often
treated with a degree of harshness, or rather "brutality," which one
would scarcely suppose a man would bestow on an object for whom he had
the least affection. Nothing, however, is more common than "to see the
men beat them without mercy" (II., 220). They killed more female than
male infants, because, as they said, the females were useless for war,
the fisheries, or the service of the temple. For the sick they had no
sympathy; at times they murdered them or buried them alive. (Ellis,
I., 340; II., 281.) In battle they gave no quarter, even to women or
children. (Hawkesworth, II., 244.)

"Every horrid torture was practised. The females experienced
brutality and murder, and the tenderest infants were perhaps
transfixed to the mother's heart by a ruthless
weapon--caught up by ruffian hands, and dashed against the
rocks or the trees--or wantonly thrown up into the air, and
caught on the point of the warrior's spear, where it writhed
in agony, and died, ... some having two or three infants
hanging on the spear they bore across their shoulders" (I.,
235-36). The bodies of females slain in war were treated
with "a degree of brutality as inconceivable as it was
detestable."


TWO STORIES OF TAHITIAN INFATUATION

While ferocity, cruelty, habitual wantonness and general coarseness
are fatal obstacles to sentimental love, they may be accompanied, as
we have seen, by the violent sensual infatuation which is so often
mistaken for love. Unsuccessful Tahitian suitors have been known to
commit suicide under the influence of revenge and despair, as is
stated by Ellis (I., 209), who also notes two instances of violent
individual preference.

The chief of Eimeo, twenty years old, of a mild disposition, became
attached to a Huahine girl and tendered proposals of marriage. She was
a niece of the principal roatira in the island, but though her family
was willing, she declined all his proposals. He discontinued his
ordinary occupations, and repaired to the habitation of the individual
whose favor he was so anxious to obtain. Here he appeared subject to
the deepest melancholy, and from morning to night, day after day, he
attended his mistress, performing humiliating offices with apparent
satisfaction. His disappointment finally became the topic of general
conversation. At length the girl was induced to accept him. They were
publicly married and lived very comfortably together for a few months,
when the wife died.

In the other instance the girl was the lover and the man unwilling. A
belle of Huahine became exceedingly fond of the society of a young man
who was temporarily staying on the island and living in the same
house. It was soon intimated to him that she wished to become his
companion for life. The intimation, however, was disregarded by the
young man, who expressed his intention to prosecute his voyage. The
young woman became unhappy, and made no secret of the cause of her
distress. She was assiduous in redoubling her efforts to please the
individual whose affection she was desirous to retain. At this period
Ellis never saw him either in the house of his friend or walking
abroad without the young woman by his side. Finding the object of her
attachment, who was probably about eighteen years of age, unmoved by
her attentions, she not only became exceedingly unhappy, but declared
that if she continued to receive the same indifference and neglect,
she would either strangle or drown herself. Her friends now
interfered, using their endeavors with the young man. He relented,
returned the attentions he had received, and the two were married.
Their happiness, however, was of short duration. The attachment which
had been so ardent in the bosom of the young woman before marriage was
superseded by a dislike as powerful, and though he seemed not unkind
to her, she not only treated him with insult but finally left him.

"The marriage tie," says Ellis (I., 213),

"was probably one of the weakest and most brittle that
existed among them; neither party felt themselves bound to
abide by it any longer than it suited their convenience. The
slightest cause was often sufficient to occasion or justify
the separation."


CAPTAIN COOK ON TAHITIAN LOVE

It has been said of Captain Cook that his maps and topographical
observations are characterized by remarkable accuracy. The same may be
said in general of his observations regarding the natives of the
islands he visited more than a century ago. He, too, noted some cases
of strong personal preference among Tahitians, but this did not