"scooped his two hands full of embers and burning sand, and flung the whole into the face and bosom of the naked object of his vengeance; for I must repeat that none of the natives wear any clothing, and that she was sitting there as nude as when she was born. The devil of his nature thus fairly aroused, he sprang for his spear. It transfixed his frantic but irresisting victim. She fell dead…. Save by the women of the tribe, the affair was scarcely noticed."
Suppose this young wife had saved the opossum for her husband. He would then have eaten it and, in accordance with their universal custom, have thrown her the bones to share with the dog. After that he might have rubbed her with grease and indulged in sensual caresses. Would that have proved his capacity for affection? Would you call a mother affectionate who fondled her child, but allowed it to starve while she gratified her own appetite? The only sure test of affection lies in disinterested actions of self-sacrifice; and even actions may sometimes mislead us. Thus several authors have been led into absurdly erroneous conclusions by a horrible custom prevalent among the natives, and thus described by Curr (I., 89):
"In some cases a woman is obliged by custom to roll up the remains of her deceased child in a variety of rags, making them into a package, which she carries about with her for several months, and at length buries. On it she lays her head at night, and the odor is so horrible that it pervades the whole camp, and not unfrequently costs the mother her life."
Angas (I., 75) refers to this custom and exclaims, rapturously, "Oh! how strong is a mother's love when even the offensive and putrid clay can be thus worshipped for the spirit that once was its tenant"(!!). Angas was an uneducated scribbler, but what shall we say on finding his sentimental view accepted by the professional German anthropologists, Gerland (VI., 780) and Jung (109)? Anyone familiar with Australian life must suspect at once that this custom is simply one of the horrible modes of punishment devised for women. Curr says the woman is "obliged by custom" to carry her dead child, and he adds: "I believe that this practice is insisted on when a young mother loses her first born, as the death of the child is thought to have come about by carelessness." To suppose that Australian mothers who usually kill all but two of their six or more children could be capable of such an act for sentimental reasons is to show a logical faculty on a par with the Australian's own. This point has already been discussed, but a further instance related by Dr. Moorehouse (J.D. Wood, 390), will bring the matter home:
"A female just born was thus about to be destroyed for the benefit of a boy about four years old, whom the mother was nourishing, while the father was standing by, ready to commit the deed. Through the kindness of a lady to whom the circumstances became known, and our joint interference, this one life was saved, and the child was properly attended to by the mother, although she at first urged the necessity of its death as strenuously as the father." "In other parts of the country," Wood adds, "the women do the horrible work themselves. They are not content with destroying the life of the infants, but they eat them."
Here, as in several of the alleged cases of African sentimentality, we see the great need of caution and detective sagacity in interpreting facts. To take another instance: Westermarck (503), in his search for cases of romantic attachment and absorbing passion among savages, fancies he has come across one in Australia, for he tells us that "even the rude Australian girl sings in a strain of romantic affliction—
'I never shall see my darling again.'"
As a matter of fact this line has no more to do with the "true monogamous instinct, the absorbing passion for one," than with Julius Caesar. Eyre relates (310, 70) that when Miago, the first native who ever quitted Perth, was taken away on theBeaglein 1838, hismothersang during his absence:
Whither does that lone ship wander,My young son I shall never see again.
Grosse, who often sides with Westermarck, here parts company with him, being convinced that
"what is called love in Australia … is no spiritual affection, but a sensual passion, which is quickly cooled in the enjoyment…. The only examples ofsympatheticlyrics that have been found in Australia are mourning songs, and even they relate only to relatives by blood and tribal affinity" (B.A.,244)[179].
A more subtle problem than those so far considered is presented by a courtship custom described by Bulmer (Brough Smyth, 82-84). The natives are very superstitious in regard to their hair. They carefully destroy any that has been cut off and would be greatly frightened to know it had fallen into another person's hands, as that would place their health and life in jeopardy at the other's will. Yet a girl who has a lover will not hesitate to give him a lock of her hair. It seems impossible to deny that this is a touch of true sentiment, of romantic love; and Bulmer accordingly calls this lock of hair a "token of affection." But is it a token of affection? The sequel will show. In due course of time the couple elope, in the black of the night they take to the bush. Great excitement prevails in camp when they are found missing. They are called "long-legged," "thin-legged," "squint-eyed," or "big-headed." Search is made, the pair are tracked and caught, and both are cruelly beaten. They make a promise not to repeat the offence, but do not keep it; another elopement follows, with more beatings. At last the girl becomes afraid to elope again. She alters her tactics, feigns a severe illness, and the parents are alarmed. Then she remembers that her lover has a lock of her hair. He is made to confess, and another fight follows. He is half killed, but after that he is allowed to keep the girl.
Thus we see that the lock, instead of being a "token of affection," as Bulmer would have us believe, and as it would be in our community, is not even a sentimental sign of the girl's confidence in her lover, but merely a detail of a foolish custom and stupid superstition.
As a matter of course Australian folk-lore, too, shows no traces of the existence of love. The nearest approach to such a thing I have been able to find is a quaint story about a man who wanted two wives and of how he got them. It is taken from Mrs. K. Langloh Parker'sAustralian Legendary Talesand the substance of it is as follows:
Wurrunnah, after a long day's hunting, came back to the camp tired and hungry. His mother had nothing for him to eat and no one else would give him anything. He flew into a rage and said: "I will go into a far country and live with strangers; my people would starve me." He went away and after divers strange adventures with a blind man and emus, who were really black fellows, he came to a camp where there was no one but seven young girls. They were friendly, gave him food, and allowed him to camp there during the night. They told him their name was Meamei and their tribe in a far country to which they would soon return.
The next day Wurrunnah went away as if leaving for good; but he determined to hide near and watch what they did, and if he could get a chance he would steal a wife from among them. He was tired of travelling alone. He saw them all start out with their yam-sticks in hand. Following them he saw them stop by the nests of some flying ants and unearth the ants. Then they sat down, threw their yam-sticks aside, and ate the ants, which are esteemed a great delicacy. While they were eating Wurrunnah sneaked up to their yam-sticks and stole two of them. When the girls had eaten all they wanted only five of them could find their sticks; so those five started off, expecting that the other two would soon find their sticks and follow them.
The two girls hunted all around the ants' nests, but could find no sticks. At last, when their backs were turned toward him, Wurrunnah crept out and stuck the lost yam-sticks near together in the ground; then he slipped back to his hiding-place. When the two girls turned round, there in front of them they saw their sticks. With a cry of joyful surprise they ran to them and caught hold of them to pull them out of the ground, in which they were firmly stuck. As they were doing so, out from his hiding-place jumped Wurrunnah. He seized both girls round their waists, holding them tightly. They struggled and screamed, but to no purpose. There was none near to hear them, and the more they struggled the tighter Wurrunnah held them. Finding their screams and struggles in vain they quietened at length, and then Wurrunnah told them not to be afraid, he would take care of them. He was lonely, he said, and wanted two wives. They must come quietly with him and he would be good to them. But they must do as he told them. If they were not quiet he would swiftly quieten them with his moorillah. But if they would come quietly with him he would he good to them. Seeing that resistance was useless the two young girls complied with his wish, and travelled quietly on with him. They told him that some day their tribe would come and steal them back again; to avoid which he travelled quickly on and on still farther hoping to elude pursuit. Some weeks passed and he told his wives to go and get some bark from two pine-trees near by. They declared if they did so he would never see them again. But he answered "Talk not so foolishly; if you ran away soon should I catch you and, catching you, would beat you hard. So talk no more." They went and began to cut the bark from the trees. As they did so each felt that her tree was rising higher out of the ground and bearing her upward with it. Higher and higher grew the pine-trees and up with them went the girl until at last the tops touched the sky. Wurrunnah called after them, but they listened not. Then they heard the voices of their five sisters, who from the sky stretched forth their hands and drew the two others in to live with them in the sky, and there you may see the seven sisters together. We know them as the Pleiades, but the black fellows call them the Meamei.
A few rather improper tales regarding the sun and moon are recorded in Woods'sNative Tribesby Meyer, who thus sums up two of them (200); the other being too obscene for citation here:
The sun they consider to be a female, who, when she sets, passes the dwelling-places of the dead. As she approaches the men assemble and divide into two bodies, leaving a road for her to pass between them; they invite her to stay with them, which she can only do for a short time, as she must be ready for her journey for the next day. For favors granted to some one among them she receives a present of red kangaroo skin; and therefore in the morning, when she rises, appears in a red dress.
The moon is also a woman, and not particularly chaste. She stays a long time with the men, and from the effects of her intercourse with them, she becomes very thin and wastes away to a mere skeleton. When in this state, Nurrunduri orders her to be driven away. She flies, and is secreted for some time, but is employed all the time in seeking roots which are so nourishing that in a short time she appears again, and fills out and becomes fat rapidly.
Here we see how even such sublime and poetic phenomena as sun and moon are to the aboriginal mind only symbols of their coarse, sensual lives: the heavenly bodies are concubines of the men, welcomed when fat, driven away when thin. That puts the substance of Australian love in a nutshell.
In the absence of aboriginal love-stories let us amuse ourselves by examining critically a few more of the alleged cases of romantic love discovered by Europeans. The erudite German anthropologist Gerland expresses his belief (VI., 755) that notwithstanding the degradation of the Australians "cases of true romantic love occur among them," and he refers for an instance to Barrington (I., 37). On consulting Barrington I find the following incident related as a sample of "genuine love in all its purity." I condense the unessential parts:
A young man of twenty-three, belonging to a tribe near Paramatta, was living in a cave with two sisters, one of fourteen, the other of twenty. One day when he returned from his kangaroo hunt he could not find the girls. Thinking they had gone to fetch water or roots for supper, he sat down till a rain-storm drove him into the cave, where he stumbled over the prostrate form of the younger sister. She was lying in a pool of blood, but presently regained consciousness and told him that a man had come to carry off her sister, after beating her on the head. She had seized the sister's arm to hold her back when the brute knocked her over with his club and dragged off the sister.
It was too late to take revenge that day, but next morning the two set out for the tribe to which the girl-robber belonged. As they approached the camp, Barrington continues, "he saw the sister of the very savage who had stolen his sister; she was leaving her tribe to pick some sticks for a fire (this was indeed a fine opportunity for revenge); so making his sister hide herself, he flew to the young woman and lifted up his club to bring her to the ground, and thus satisfy his revenge. The victim trembled, yet, knowing his power, she stood with all the fortitude she could; lifting up her eyes, they came in contact with his and such was the enchanting beauty of her form (!) that he stood an instant motionless to gaze on it (!). The poor thing saw this and dropped on her knees (!) to implore his pity, but before she could speak, his revenge softened into love (!); he threw down his club, and clasping her in his arms (!) vowed eternal constancy (!!!); his pity gained her love (!), thus each procured a mutual return. Then calling his sister, she would have executed her revenge, but for her brother, who told her she was now his wife. On my hero asking after his sister, his new wife said she was very ill, but would soon be better; and she excused her brother (!) because the means he had taken were the customary one of procuring a wife (!!); 'but you,' said she, 'have more white heart' (meaning he was more like the English), 'you no beat me; me love you; you love me; me love your sisters; your sisters love me; my brother no good man.' This artless address won both their hearts, and now all three live in one hut which I enabled them to make comfortable within half a mile of my own house."
Barrington concludes with these words: "This little anecdote I have given as the young man related it to me and perhaps I havelost much of its simplicity." It is very much to be feared that he has. I have marked with, exclamation points the most absurdly impossible parts of the tale as idealized and embellished by Barrington. The Australian never told him that he "gazed motionless" on the "enchanting beauty" of the girl's form or that his "revenge softened into love;" he never clasped her in his arms, nor "vowed eternal constancy." The girl never dreamt of saying that his pity gained her love, or of excusing her brother for doing what all Australian men do. These sentimental touches are gratuitous additions of Barrington; native Australians do not even clasp each other in their arms, and they are as incapable of vowing eternal constancy as of comparing Herbert Spencer's philosophy with Schopenhauer's. Yet on the strength of such dime novel rubbish an anthropologist assures us that savages are capable of feeling pure romantic love! The kernel of truth in the above tale reduces itself to this, that the young man whose sister was stolen intended to take revenge by killing the abductor, but that on seeing his sister he concluded to marry her. These savages, as we have seen, always act thus, killing the enemy's women only when unable to carry them off.
Lumholtz relates the following story to show that "these blacks also may be greatly overcome by the sentiment of love" (213):
"A 'civilized' black man entered a station on Georgina River and carried off a woman who belonged to a young black man at the station. She loved her paramour and was glad to get away from the station; but the whites desired to keep her for their black servant, as he could not be made to stay without her, and they brought her back, threatening to shoot the stranger if he came again. Heedless of the threat, he afterward made a second attempt to elope with his beloved, but the white men pursued the couple and shot the poor fellow."
If Lumholtz had reflected for a moment on the difference between love as a sentiment and love as an appetite, he would have realized the error of using the expression "the sentiment of love" in connection with such a story of adulterous kidnapping, in which there is absolutely nothing to indicate whether the kidnapper coveted the other man's wife for any other than the most carnal reasons. It is not unusual for an Australian to risk his life in stealing a woman. He does that every time he captures one from another tribe. In men who have so little imaginative faculty as these, the possibility of being killed has no more deterrent effect than it has in two dogs or stags fighting for a female. We must not judge such indifference to deadly consequences from our point of view.
Gerstaecker, a German traveller, who traversed a part of Australia, has a tale of aboriginal love which also bears the earmarks of fiction. On his whole trip, he says, in his 514-page volume devoted to Australia, he heard of only one case of genuine love. A young man of the Bamares tribe took a fancy to a girl of the Rengmutkos. She was also pleased with him and he eloped with her at night, taking her to his hunting-ground on the river. The tribe heard of his escapade and ordered him to return the girl to her home. He obeyed, but two weeks later eloped with her again. He was reprimanded and informed that if it happened again he would be killed. For the present he escaped punishment personally, but was ordered to cudgel the girl and then send her back home. He obeyed again; the girl fell down before him and he rained hard blows on her head and shoulders till the elders themselves interceded and cried enough. The girl was chased away and the lover remained alone. For two days he refused to join in the hunting or diversions of his companions. On the third day he ascended an eminence whence the Murray Valley can be seen. In the distance he saw two columns of smoke; they had been maintained for him all this time by his girl. He took his spear and opossum coat and hastened toward the columns of smoke. He was about to commit his third offence, which meant certain death, yet on he went and found the girl. Her wounds were not yet healed, but she hastened to meet him and put her head on his bosom.
This tale is open to the same criticism as Lumholtz's. The man risks his life, not for another, but to secure what he covets. It is a romantic love-story, but there is no indication anywhere of romantic love, while some of the details are fictitiously embellished. An Australian girl does not put her head on her lover's bosom, nor could she camp alone and keep up two columns of smoke for several days without being discovered and kidnapped. The story is evidently one of an ordinary elopement, embellished by European fancy.[180]
There is some quaint local color in Australian courtship, but usually blows play too important a role to make their procedure acceptable to anyone with a less waddy-proof skull than an Australian. Spencer and Gillen relate (556) that in cases of charming, the initiative is sometimes taken by the woman,
"who can, of course, imagine that she has been charmed, and then find a willing aider and abettor in the man whose vanity is flattered by this response to his magic power, which he can soon persuade himself that he did really exercise; besides which, an extra wife has its advantages in the way of procuring food and saving him trouble, while, if his other women object, the matter is one which does not hurt him, for it can easily be settled once and for all by a stand-up fight between the women and the rout of the loser."
Quaintly Australian are the following details of Kurnai courtship given by Howitt:
"Sometimes it might happen that the young men were backward. Perhaps there might be several young girls who ought to be married, and the women had then to take the matter in hand when some eligible young men were at camp. They consulted, and some went out in the forest and with sticks killed some of the little birds, the yeerung. These they brought back to the camp and casually showed them to some of the men; then there was an uproar. The men were very angry. The yeerungs, their brothers, had been killed! The young men got sticks; the girls took sticks also, and they attacked each other. Heavy blows were struck, heads were broken, and blood flowed, but no one stopped them.
"Perhaps this light might last a quarter of an hour, then they separated. Some even might be left on the ground insensible. Even the men and women who were married joined in the free fight. The next day the young men, the brewit, went, and in their turn killed some of the women's 'sisters,' the birds djeetgun, and the consequence was that on the following day there was a worse fight than before. It was perhaps a week or two before the wounds and bruises were healed. By and by, some day one of the eligible young men met one of the marriageable young women; he looked at her, and said 'Djeetgun!' She said 'Yeerung! What does the yeerung eat?' The reply was, 'He eats so-and-so,' mentioning kangaroo, opossum, or emu, or some other game. Then they laughed, and she ran off with him without telling anyone."
Apart from magic and birds Australian lovers appear not to have been without means of communicating with one another. Howitt says that if a Kurnai girl took a fancy to a man she might send him a secret message asking, "Will you find me some food?" And this was understood to be a proposal—a rather unsentimental and utilitarian proposal, it must be confessed. According to one of the correspondents of Curr (III., 176) the natives along the Mary River even made use of a kind of love-letters which, he says, "were peculiar."
"When the writer was once travelling with a black boy the latter produced from the lining of his hat a bit of twig about an inch long and having three notches cut on it. The black boy explained that he was adhomka(messenger), that the central notch represented himself, and the other notches, one the youth sending the message, the other the girl for whom it was intended. It meant, in the words of Dickens, 'Barkis is willin'.' Thedhomkasewed up the love-symbol in the lining of his hat, carried it for months without divulging his secret to his sable friends, and finally delivered it safely. This practice appeared to be well-known, and was probably common."
Such a "love-letter," consisting of three notches cut in a twig, symbolically sums up this whole chapter. The difference between this bushman's twig and the love-letter of a civilized modern suitor is no greater than the difference between aboriginal Australian "love" and genuine romantic love.
Between the northern extremity of Australia and the southern extremity of New Guinea, about ninety miles wide, lies Torres Strait, discovered by a Spaniard in 1606, and not visited again by whites till Captain Cook sailed through in 1770. This strait has been called a "labyrinth of islands, rocks, and coral reefs," so complicated and dangerous that Torres, the original discoverer, required two months to get through.
The larger islands in this strait are of special interest to students of the phenomena of love and marriage, for on them it is not only permissible but obligatory for women to propose to the men. Needless to say that the inhabitants of these islands, though so near Queensland, are not Australians. They are Melanesians, but their customs are insular and unique. Curr (I., 279) says of them that they are "with one exception, of the Papuan type, frizzle-haired people who cultivate the soil, use the bow and arrow and not the spear, and, un-Australian-like, treat their women with some consideration."
Luckily the customs of these islanders have been carefully and intelligently studied by Professor A.C. Haddon, who published an entertaining account of them in a periodical to which one usually looks for instruction rather than amusement.[181] Professor Haddon combines the two. On the island of Tud, he tells us, when boys undergo the ordeal of initiation into manhood, one of the lessons taught them is: "You no like girl first; if you do, girl laugh and call you woman." When a girl likes a man, she tells his sister and gives her a ring of string. On the first suitable opportunity the sister says to her brother: "Brother, I have some good news for you. A woman loves you." He asks who it is, and, if willing to go on with the affair, tells his sister to ask the girl to keep an appointment with him in some spot in the bush. On receipt of the message the enamoured girl informs her parents that she is going into the bush to get some wood, or food, or some such excuse. At the appointed time the man meets her; and they sit down and yarn, without any fondling. The ensuing dialogue is given by Haddon in the actual words which Maino, chief of Tud, used:
"Opening the conversation, the man says, 'You like meproper?'
"'Yes,' she replies, 'I like you proper with my heartinside. Eye along my heart see you—you my man.'
"Unwilling to rashly give himself away, he asks,'Howyou like me?'
"'I like your leg—you got fine body—your skin good—Ilike you altogether,' replies the girl.
"After matters have proceeded satisfactorily the girl, anxious to clench the matter, asks when they are to be married. The man says, 'To-morrow, if you like.'
"Then they go home and inform their relatives. There is a mock fight and everything is settled."
On the island of Mabniag, after a girl has sent an intermediary to bring a string to the man she covets, she follows this up by sending him food, again and again. But he "lies low" a month or two before he ventures to eat any of this food, because he has been warned by his mother that if he takes it he will "get an eruption all over his face." Finally, he concludes she means business, so he consults the big men of the village and marries her.
If a man danced well, he found favor in the sight of these island damsels. His being married did not prevent a girl from proposing. Of course she took good care not to make the advances through one of the other wives—that might have caused trouble!—but in the usual way. On this island the men never made the first advances toward matrimony. Haddon tells a story of a native girl who wanted to marry a Loyalty Islander, a cook, who was loafing on the mission premises. He did not encourage her advances, but finally agreed to meet her in the bush, where, according to his version of the story, he finally refused her. She, however, accused him of trying to "steal" her. This led to a big palaver before the chief, at which the verdict was that the cook was innocent and that the girl had trumped up the charge in order to force the marriage.
If a man and a girl began to keep company, he was branded on the back with a charcoal, while her mark was cut into the skin (because "she asked the man"). It was expected they would marry, but if they did not nothing could be done. If it was the man who was unwilling, the girl's father told the other men of the place, and they gave him a sound thrashing. Refusing a girl was thus a serious matter on these islands!
The missionaries, Haddon was informed,
"discountenance the native custom of the women proposing to the men, although there is not the least objection to it from a moral or social point of view; quite the reverse. So the white man's fashion is being introduced. As an illustration of the present mixed condition of affairs, I found that a girl who wants a certain man writes him a letter, often on a slate, and he replies in a similar manner."
On the island of Tud it often happened that the girl who was first enamoured of a youth at his initiation, and who first asked him in marriage, was one who "like too many men." The lad, being on his guard, might get rid of her attentions by playing a trick on her, making a bogus appointment with her in the bush, and then informing the elder men, who would appear in his place at the trysting-place, to the girl's mortification.
Various details given in the chapter on Australia indicated that if the women on that big island did not propose, as a rule, it was not from coyness but because the selfishness of the men and their arrangements made it impossible in most cases. On these neighboring islands the women could propose; yet the cause of love, of course, did not gain anything from such an arrangement, which could serve only to stimulate licentiousness. Haddon gathered the impression that "chastity before marriage was unknown, free intercourse not being considered wrong; it was merely 'fashion along we folk.'" Their excuse was the same as Adam's: "Woman, he steal; man, how can he help it?"[182]
Nocturnal courtship was in vogue:
"Decorum was observed. Thus I was told in Tud a girl, before going to sleep, would tie a string round her foot and pass it under the thatched wall of the house. In the middle of the night her lover would come, pull the string, and so awaken the girl, who would then join him. As the chief of Mabuiag said, 'What can the father do; if she wants the man how can he stop her?'"
On Muralug Island the custom is somewhat different. There, after the girl has sent her grass-ring to the man she wants,
"if he is willing to proceed in the matter, he goes to the rendezvous in the bush and, not unnaturally, takes every advantage of the situation. Every night afterwards he goes to the girl's house and steals away before daybreak. At length someone informs the girl's father that a man is sleeping with his daughter. The father communicates with the girl, and she tells her lover that her father wants to see him—'To see what sort of man he is?' The father then says, 'You like my daughter, she like you, you may have her.' The details are then arranged."
Sometimes, if a girl was too free with her favors to the men, the other women cut a mark down her back, to make her feel ashamed. Yet she had no difficulty on this account in subsequently finding a husband.
Besides the existence of "free love," there are other customs arguing the absence of sentiment in these insular affairs of the heart. Infanticide was frequently resorted to, the babes being buried alive in the sand, for no other reason than to save the trouble of taking care of them. After marriage, in spite of the fact that the girl did the proposing, she becomes the man's property; so much so that if she should offend him, he may kill her and no harm will come to him. If her sister comes to remonstrate, he can kill her too, and if he has two wives and they quarrel, he can kill both. In that love-scene reported by Maino, the chief of Tud, the girl gives us her "sentimental" reasons why she loves him: because he has a fine leg and body, and a good skin. The "romance" of the situation is further aggravated when we read that, as in Australia, swapping sisters is the usual way of getting a wife, and that if a man has no sister to exchange he must pay for his wife with a canoe, a knife, or a glass bottle. Chief Maino himself told Haddon that he gave for his wife seven pieces of calico, one dozen shirts, one dozen singlets, one dozen trousers, one dozen handkerchiefs, two dozen tomahawks, besides tobacco, fish-lines and hooks and pearl shells. He finished his enumeration by exclaiming "By golly, he too dear!"
How did these islanders ever come to indulge in the custom, so inconsistent with their general attitude toward women, of allowing them to propose? The only hint at an explanation I have been able to find is contained in the following citation from Haddon:
"If an unmarried woman desired a man she accosted him, but the man did not ask the woman (at least, so I was informed), for if she refused him he would feel ashamed, and maybe brain her with a stone club, and so 'he would kill her for nothing.'"
The islands of the Pacific Ocean and adjacent waters are almost innumerable. To give an account of the love-affairs customary on all of them would require a large volume by itself. In the present work it is not possible to do more than select a few of the islands, as samples, preference being given to those that show at least some traces of feelings rising above mere sensualism. One of the largest and best known of these islands is Borneo, and of its inhabitants the Dyaks are of special interest from our point of view. Their customs have been observed and described by St. John, Low, Bock, H. Ling Roth and others.[183]
In some parts of Dutch Borneo the cruel custom prevails of locking up a girl when she is eight to ten years old in a small, dark apartment of the house, which she is not allowed to leave for about seven years. She spends her time making mats and doing other handiwork, but is not allowed to see anyone—not even of her own family—except a female slave. When she is free from her prison she appears bleached a light yellow, as though made out of wax, and totters along on small, thin feet—which the natives consider especially attractive.
Dyak girls are not subjected to any such restraints, and in some respects they enjoy more liberty than is good for them. As usual among the lower races, they have to do most of the hard work. "It is a sad sight," says Low (75), "to see the Dyak girls, some but nine or ten years of age, carrying water up the mount in bamboos, their bodies bent nearly double, and groaning under the weight of their burden." Lieutenant Marryat found that the mountain Dyak girls, if not beautiful, had some beautiful points—good eyes, teeth, and hair, besides good manners, and they "knew how to make use of their eyes." Denison (cited by Roth, I., 46) remarks that
"Some of the girls showed signs of good looks, but hard work, poor feeding, and intermarriage and early marriage soon told their tale, and rapidly converted them into ugly, dirty, diseased old hags, and this at an age when they are barely more than young women."
They marry sometimes as early as the age of thirteen, and in general they are inferior in looks to the men. Marryat thought he saw "something wicked in their dark furtive glances," while Earl found the faces of Dyak women generally extremely interesting, largely on account of "the soft expression given by their long eyelashes, and by the habit of keeping the eyes half closed." "Their general conversation is not wanting in wit," says Brooke (I., 70),
"and considerable acuteness of perception is evinced, but often accompanied by improper and indecent language, of which they are unaware when giving utterance to it. Their acts, however, fortunately evince more regard for modesty than their words."
Grant, in describing his tour among the Land Dyaks, remarks (97):
"It has been mentioned once or twice that we found the women bathing at the village well. Although, generally speaking, no lack of proper modesty is shown, certainly rather an Adam and Eve like idea of the same is displayed on such occasions by these simple people."
Concerning the sexual morality of the Dyaks, opinions of observers differ somewhat. St. John (I., 52) observes that "the Sea Dyak women are modest and yet unchaste, love warmly and yet divorce easily, but are generally faithful to their husbands when married." It is agreed that the morality of the Land Dyaks is superior to that of the Sea Dyaks; yet with them,
"as among the Sea Dyaks, the young people have almost unrestrained intercourse; but, if a girl prove with child a marriage immediately takes place, the bridegroom making the richest presents he can to her relatives" (I., 113). "There is no strict law,"
says Mundy (II., 2),
"to bind the conduct of young married people of either sex, and parents are more or less indifferent on those points, according to their individual ideas of right and wrong. It is supposed that every young Dyak woman will eventually suit herself with a husband, and it is considered no disgrace to be on terms of intimacy with the youth of her fancy till she has the opportunity of selecting a suitable helpmate; and as the unmarried ladies attach much importance to bravery, they are always desirous of securing the affections of a renowned warrior. Lax, however, as this code may appear before marriage, it would seem to be sufficiently stringent after the matrimonial. One wife only is allowed, and infidelity is punished by fine on both sides—inconstancy on the part of the husband being esteemed equally as bad as in the female. The breach of the marriage vows, however, appears to be infrequent, though they allow that, during the time of war, more license is given."
Brooke Low relates that the Sea Dyak girls receive their male visitors at night.
"They sleep apart from their parents, sometimes in the same room, but more often in the loft. The young men are not invited to sleep with them unless they are old friends, but they may sit with them and chat, and if they get to be fond of each other after a short acquaintance, and wish to make a match of it, they are united in marriage, if the parents on either side have no objections to offer. It is in fact the only way open to the man and woman to become acquainted with each other, as privacy during the daytime is out of the question in a Dyak village."
The same method of courtship prevails among the Land Dyaks. Some queer details are given by St. John, Crossland and Leggatt (Roth, 110). About nine or ten o'clock at night the lover goes on tiptoe to the mosquito curtains of his beloved, gently awakens her and offers her some prepared betel-nut. If she accepts it, he is happy, for it means that his suit is prospering, but if she refuses it and says "Be good enough to blow up the fire," it means that he is dismissed. Sometimes their discourse is carried on through the medium of a sort of Jew's-harp, one handing it to the other, asking questions and returning answers. The lover remains until daybreak. After the consent of the girl and her parents has been obtained, one more ordeal remains; the bridal couple have to run the gauntlet of the mischievous village boys, who stand ready with sooted hands to begrime their faces and bodies; and generally they succeed so well that bride and groom present the appearance of negroes.
Elopements also occur in cases where parental consent is withheld. Brooke Low thus describes an old custom which permits a man to carry off a girl:
"She will meet him by arrangement at the water-side and step into his boat with a paddle in her hand, and both will pull away as fast as they can. If pursued he will stop every now and then to deposit some article of value on the bank, such as a gun, a jar, or a favor for the acceptance of her family, and when he has exhausted his resources he will leave his own sword. When the pursuers observe this they will cease to follow, knowing he is cleared out. As soon as he reaches his own village he tidies up the house and spreads the mats, and when his pursuers arrive he gives them food to eat and toddy to drink, and sends them home satisfied. In the meanwhile he is left in possession of his wife."
In one of the introductory chapters of this volume a brief account was given of the Dyak head-hunters. Reference was made to the fact that the more heads a man has cut off, the more he is respected. He cannot marry until he has killed a man, woman, or child, and brought home the head as a trophy, and cases are known of men having to wait two years before they could procure the skull necessary to soften the heart of the gentle beloved. "From all accounts," says Roth (II., 163),
"there can be little doubt that one of the chief incentives to getting heads is the desire to please the women … Mrs. McDougall relates an old Sakaran legend which says that the daughter of their great ancestor, who resides in heaven near the great Evening Star, refused to marry until her betrothed brought her a present worth her acceptance. The man went into the jungle and killed a deer, which he presented to her; but the fair lady turned away in disdain. He went again and returned with amias, the great monkey [sic] who haunts the forest; but this present was not more to her taste. Then, in a fit of despair, the lover went abroad, and killed the first man that he met, and throwing his victim's head at the maiden's feet, he exclaimed at the cruelty she had made him guilty of; but to his surprise, she smiled, and said that now he had discovered the only gift worthy of herself."
Roth cites a correspondent who says:
"At this moment there are two Dyaks in the Kuching jail who acknowledge that they took the heads of two innocent Chinese with no other object in view when doing so than to secure the pseudo affections of women, who refused to marry them until they had thus proved themselves to be men."
Here is what a sweet Dyak maiden said to a young man who asked for her hand and heart:
"Why don't you go to the Saribus Fort and there take the head of Bakir (the Dyak chief), or even that of Tuan Hassan (Mr. Watson), and then I will deign to think of your desires with some degree of interest."
Says Captain Mundy (II., 222):
"No aristocratic youth dare venture to pay his addresses to a Dyak demoiselle unless he throws at the blushing maiden's feet a netful of skulls! In some districts it is customary for the young lady to desire her lover to cut a thick bamboo from the neighboring jungle, and when in possession of this instrument, she carefully arranges thecadeau d'amouron the floor, and by repeated blows beats the heads into fragments, which, when thus pounded, are scraped up and cast into the river; at the same time she throws herself into the arms of the enraptured youth, and so commences the honeymoon."
Another account of Dyak courtship (Roth, II., 166) represents a young warrior returning from a head-hunting expedition and, on meeting his beloved, holding in each hand one of the captured heads by the hair. She takes one of the heads, whereupon they dance round each other with the most extravagant gestures, amidst the applause of the Rajah and his people. The next step is a feast, at which the young couple eat together. When this is over, they have to take off whatever clothes they have on and sit naked on the ground while some of the old women throw over them handfuls of paddy and repeat a prayer that they may prove as fruitful as that grain.
"The warrior can take away any inferior man's wife at pleasure, and is thanked for so doing. A chief who has twenty heads in his possession will do the same with another who may have only ten, and upwards to the Rajah's family, who can take any woman at pleasure."
Though the Dyaks may be somewhat less coarse than those Australians who make a captured woman marry the man who killed her husband, an almost equal callousness of feeling is revealed by J. Dalton's statement that the women taken on the head-hunting expedition "soon became attached to the conquerors"—resembling, in this respect, the Australian woman who, of her own accord, deserts to an enemy who has vanquished her husband. Cases of frantic amorous infatuation occur, as a matter of course. Brooke (II., 106) relates the story of a girl of seventeen who, for the sake of an ugly, deformed, and degraded workman, left her home, dressed as a man, and in a small broken canoe made a trip of eighty miles to join her lover. In olden times death would have been the penalty for such an act; but she, being a "New Woman" in her tribe, exclaimed, "If I fell in love with a wild beast, no one should prevent me marrying it." In this Eastern clime, Brooke declares, "love is like the sun's rays in warmth." He might have added that it is as fickle and transient as the sun's warmth; every passing cloud chills it. The shallow nature of Dyak attachment is indicated by their ephemeral unions and universal addiction to divorce. "Among the Upper Sarawak Dyaks divorce is very frequent, owing to the great extent of adultery," says Haughton (Roth, I., 126); and St. John remarks:
"One can scarcely meet with a middle-aged Dayak who has not had two, and often three or more wives. I have heard of a girl of seventeen or eighteen years who had already had three husbands. Repudiation, which is generally done by the man or woman running away to the house of a near relation, takes place for the slightest cause—personal dislike or disappointments, a sudden quarrel, bad dreams, discontent with their partners' powers of labor or their industry, or, in fact, any excuse which will help to give force to the expression, 'I do not want to live with him, or her, any longer.'"
"Many men and women have married seven or eight times before they find the partner with whom they desire to spend the rest of their lives."
"When a couple are newly-married, if a deer or a gazelle, or a moose-deer utters a cry at night near the house in which the pair are living, it is an omen of ill—they must separate, or the death of one would ensue. This might be a great trial to an European lover; the Dayaks, however, take the matter very philosophically."
"Mr. Chalmers mentions to me the case of a young Penin-jau man who was divorced from his wife on the third day after marriage. The previous night a deer had uttered its warning cry, and separate they must. The morning of the divorce he chanced to go into the 'Head House' and there sat the bridegroom contentedly at work."
"'Why are you here?' he was asked, as the 'Head House' is frequented by bachelors and boys only; 'What news of your new wife?'"
"'I have no wife, we were separated this morning because the deer cried last night.'"
"'Are you sorry?'"
"'Very sorry.'"
"'What are you doing with that brass wire?'"
"'Makingperik'—the brass chain work which the women wear round their waists—'for a young woman whom I want to get for my new wife,'" (I., 165-67; 55.)
Such is the love of Dyaks. Marriage among them, says the same keen observer, "is a business of partnership for the purpose of having children, dividing labor, and, by means of their offspring, providing for their old age;" and Brooke Low remarks that "intercourse before marriage is strictly to ascertain that the marriage will be fruitful, as the Dyaks want children," In other words, apart from sensual purposes, the women are not desired and cherished for their own sakes, but only for utilitarian reasons, as a means to an end. Whence we conclude that, high as the Dyaks stand above Australians and many Africans, they are still far from the goal of genuine affection. Their feelings are only skin deep.
Dyaks are not without their love-songs.
"I am the tender shoot of the drooping libau with its fragrant scent." "I am the comb of the champion fighting-cock that never runs away," "I am the hawk flying down the Kanyau Kiver, coming after the fine feathered fowl." "I am the crocodile from the mouth of the Lingga, coming repeatedly for the striped flower of the rose-apple."
Roth (I., 119-21) cites forty-five of these verses, mostly expressive of such selfish boasting and vanity. Not one of them expresses a feeling of tenderness or admiration of a beloved person, not to speak of altruistic feelings.
Is a Dyak capable of admiring personal beauty? Some of the girls have fine figures and pretty faces; but there is no evidence that any but the voluptuous (non-esthetic) qualities of the figure are appreciated, and as for the faces, if the men really appreciated beauty as we do, they would first of all things insist that the girls must keep their faces clean. An amusing experiment made by St. John with some Ida'an girls (I., 339) is suggestive from this point of view:
"We selected one who had the dirtiest face—and it was difficult to select where all were dirty—and asked her to glance at herself in a looking-glass. She did so, and passed it round to the others; we then asked which they thought looked best, cleanliness or dirt: this was received with a universal giggle.
"We had brought with us several dozen cheap looking-glasses, so we told Iseiom, the daughter of Li Moung, our host, that if she would go and wash her face we would give her one. She treated the offer with scorn, tossed her head, and went into her father's room. But about half an hour afterwards, we saw her come into the house and try to mix quietly with the crowd; but it was of no use, her companions soon noticed she had a clean face, and pushed her to the front to be inspected. She blushingly received her looking-glass and ran away, amid the laughter of the crowd."
The example had a great effect, however, and before evening nine of the girls had received looking-glasses.[184]
In the chapter on Personal Beauty I endeavored to show that if savages who live near the sea or river are clean, it is not owing to their love of cleanliness, but to an accident, bathing being resorted to by them as an antidote to heat, or as a sport. This applies particularly to the Melanesian and Polynesian inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, whose chief pastimes are swimming and surf riding. Thomas Williams, in his authoritative work on Fiji and the Fijians, makes some remarks which entirely bear out my views:
"Too much has been said about the cleanliness of the natives. The lower classes are often very dirty…. They … seldom hesitate to sink both cleanliness and dignity in what they call comfort" (117).
We are therefore not surprised to read on another page (97) that
"of admiring emotion, produced by the contemplation of beauty, these people seem incapable; while they remain unmoved by the wondrous loveliness with which they are everywhere surrounded…. The mind of the Fijian has hitherto seemed utterly unconscious of any inspiration of beauty, and his imagination has grovelled in the most vulgar earthliness."
Sentimentalists have therefore erred in ascribing to the Fijian cannibals cleanliness as a virtue. They have erred also in regard to several other alleged refinements they discovered among these tribes. One of these is the custom prohibiting a father from cohabiting with his wife until the child is weaned. This has been supposed to indicate a kind regard for the welfare and health of mother and child. But when we examine the facts we find that far from being a proof of superior morality, this custom reveals the immorality of the husband, and makes an assassin of the wife. Read what Williams has to say (154):
"Nandi, one of whose wives was pregnant, left her to dwell with a second. The forsaken one awaited his return some months, and at last the child disappeared. This practice seemed to be universal on Vanua Levu—quite a matter of course—so that few women could be found who had not in some way been murderers. The extent of infanticide in some parts of this island reaches nearer to two-thirds than half."
Williams further informs us (117) that "husbands are as frequently away from their wives as they are with them, since it is thought not well for a man to sleep regularly at home." He does not comment on this, but Seeman (191) and Westermarck (151) interpret the custom as indicating Fijian "ideas of delicacy in married life," which, after what has just been said, is decidedly amusing. If Fijians really were capable of considering it indelicate to spend the night under the same roof with their wives, it would indicate their indelicacy, not their delicacy. The utterly unprincipled men doubtless had their reasons for preferring to stay away from home, and probably their great contempt for women also had something to do with the custom.
In Fiji, says Crawley (225), women are kept away from participation in worship. "Dogs are excluded from some temples, women from all." In many parts of the group woman is treated, according to Williams,
"as a beast of burden, not exempt from any kind of labor, and forbidden to enter any temple; certain kinds of food she may eat only by sufferance, and that after her husband has finished. In youth she is the victim of lust, and in old age, of brutality."
Girls are betrothed and married as children without consulting their choice. "I have seen an old man of sixty living with two wives both under fifteen years of age." Such of the young women as are acquainted with foreign ways envy the favored women who wed "the man to whom their spirit flies." Women are regarded as the property of the men, and as an incentive to bravery they are "promised to such as shall, by their prowess, render themselves deserving." They are used for paying war-debts and other accounts; for instance, "the people submitted to their chiefs and capitulated, offering two women, a basket of earth, whales' teeth, and mats, to buy the reconciliation of the Rewans."
"A chief of Nandy, in Viti Levu, was very desirous to have a musket which an American captain had shown him. The price of the coveted piece was two hogs. The chief had only one; but he sent on board with it a young woman as an equivalent."
At weddings the prayer is that the bride may "bring forth male children"; and when the son is born, one of the first lessons taught him is "to strike his mother, lest he should grow up to be a coward." When a husband died, it was the national custom to murder his wife, often his mother too, to be his companions. To kill a defenceless woman was an honorable deed.
"I once asked a man why he was called Koroi. 'Because,' he replied, 'I, with several other men, found some women and children in a cave, drew them out and clubbed them and was then consecrated.'"
So far have sympathy and gallantry progressed in Fiji.
"Many examples might be given of most dastardly cruelty, where women and even unoffending children were abominably slain." "I have labored to make the murderers of females ashamed of themselves; and have heard their cowardly cruelty defended by the assertion that such victims were doubly good—because they ate well, and because of the distress it caused their husbands and friends." "Cannibalism does not confine itself to one sex." "The heart, the thigh, and the arm above the elbow, are considered the greatest dainties."
One of these monsters, whom Williams knew, sent his wife to fetch wood and collect leaves to line the oven. When she had cheerfully and unsuspectingly obeyed his orders, he killed her, put her in the oven, and ate her. There had been no quarrel; he was simply hungering for a dainty morsel. Even after death the women are subjected to barbarous treatment.
"One of the corpses was that of an old man of seventy, another of a fine young woman of eighteen…. All were dragged about and subjected to abuse too horrible and disgusting to be described."[185]
With these facts in mind the reader is able to appreciate the humor of the suggestion that it is "ideas of delicacy" that prevent Fijian husbands from spending their nights at home. Equally amusing is the blunder of Wilkes, who tells us (III., 356) that
"though almost naked, these natives have a great idea of modesty, and consider it extremely indelicate to expose the whole person. If either a man or woman should be discovered without the 'maro' or 'liku,' they would probably be killed."
Williams, the great authority on Fijians, says that "Commodore Wilkes's account of Fijian marriages seems to be compounded of Oriental notions and Ovalan yarns" (147). Having been a mere globe-trotter, it is natural that he should have erred in his interpretation of Fijian customs, but it is unpardonable in anthropologists to accept such conclusions without examination. As a matter of fact, the scant Fijian attire has nothing to do with modesty; quite the contrary. Williams says (147) "that young unmarried women wear alikulittle 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).
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.
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'sSongs 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:
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.
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 themfrom 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 meI in return gave her my comb; I threw it to her and ah me! it strikesher face!"What rough bark of a tree are you made from?" she cries. And sosaying she turned and went away in anger.
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 ofNaloko.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 joylessWithout thee, my handsome, slender waisted,Strong-shouldered, pillar-necked lad."
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 "bycompaniesof 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).