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tribes of India are "the dirtier the farther we advance;" elsewhere we read:

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"Both males and females, as a class, are very dirty and filthy in both person and habits. They appear to have an antipathy to bathing, and to make matters worse, they have a habit of anointing their bodies with ghee (melted butter); ' and of another of these tribes: "The Karens are a dirty people. They never use soap, and their skins are enamelled with dirt. When water is thrown on them, it rolls off their backs like globules of quicksilver on a marble slab. To them bathing has a cooling, but no cleansing effect."

The Mishinis are "disgustingly dirty." By the Kirgliez "uncleanliness is elevated into a virtue hallowed by tradition." The Kalmucks are described as filthy, the Kamtschadales as exceedingly so, etc.

REASONS FOR BATHING.

Among the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific we meet with apparent exceptions. These natives are practically amphibious, spending half their time in the ocean, and are therefore of necessity clean. So are certain coast negroes and Indian tribes living along river-banks. But Ellis (Pol. Res., I., 110) was shrewd enough to see that the habit of frequent bathing indulged in by the South Sea Islanders was a luxury -a result of the hot climate-and not an indication of the virtue of cleanliness. In this respect Captain Cook showed less acumen, for he remarks (II., 148) that "nothing appears to give them greater pleasure than personal cleanliness, to produce which they frequently bathe in ponds." His confusion of ideas is made apparent in the very next sentence, where he adds that the water in most of these ponds "stinks intolerably." That it is merely the desire for comfort and sport that induces the Polynesians to bathe so much is proved further by the attitude of the New Zealanders. Hawksworth declares (III., 451) that they "stink like Hottentots;" and the reason lies in the colder climate which

Trans. Eth. Soc., London, N. S., VII., 238; Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, XXXV., Pt. II., 25. Spencer, D. S.

makes bathing less of a luxury to them. The Micronesians also spend much of their time in the water, for comfort, not for cleanliness. Gerland cites grewsome details of their nastiness. (Waitz, V., Pt. II., 81, 188.) The Kaffirs, says Gardiner (101), although far from cleanly," are fond of bathing. In some other cases the water is sought for its warmth instead of its coolness. In Brazil the morning air is much colder than the water, wherefore the natives take to the river for comfort, as the Japanese do in winter to their hot tubs. All Indians, says Bancroft (I., 83), "attach great importance to their sweatbaths," not for cleanliness for they are tremely filthy in their persons and habits "but "as a remedial measure."

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Unless they happen to indulge in bathing for comfort, the lowest of savages are also the dirtiest. Leigh writes (147) that in South Australia many of the women, including the wives of chiefs, had sore eyes from the smoke, the filth, and their abominable want of cleanliness." Sturt (II., 53) refers to the Australian women as "disgusting objects." At funerals, "the women besmear themselves with the most disgusting filth." The naked boys in Taplin's school "had no notion of cleanliness." The youths from the age of ten to sixteen or seventeen were compelled by custom to let their hair grow, the result being "a revolting mass of tangled locks and filth." (Woods, 20, 85.) Sturt sums up his impressions by declaring (II., 126): "Really, the loathsome condition and hideous countenances of the women would, I should imagine, have been a complete antidote to the sexual passion.”

CORPULENCE VERSUS BEAUTY

An instructive instance of the loose reasoning which prevails in the esthetic sphere is provided by the Rev. H. N. Hutchinson, in his Marriage Customs in Many Lands. After describing some of the customs of the Australians, he goes on to say: "One would think that such degraded creatures as these men are would be quite incapable of appreciating female beauty, but that is not the case. Good-looking

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girls are much admired and consequently frequently stolen away. As a matter of fact, beauty has nothing to do with the stealing of the women. The real motive is revealed in

the following passage from Brough Smyth (79):

"A very fat woman presents such an attractive appearance to the eyes of the blacks that she is always liable to be stolen. However old and ugly she may be, she will be courted and petted and sought for by the warriors, who seldom hesitate to risk their lives if there is a chance for obtaining so great a prize.

An Australian Shakspere obviously would have written. "Fat provoketh thieves sooner than gold," instead of "beauty provoketh thieves." And the amended maxim applies to savages in general, as well as to barbarians and Orientals. In his Savage Life in Polynesia, the Rev. W. W. Gill remarks:

"The great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the guardian would whip the culprit for not eating more."

American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and Polynesians. The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand how anyone could marry such fat abominations. Concerning the South American tribes, Humboldt says (Trav., I., 301): "In several languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead."

FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET

The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief criterion of a woman's charms. The

In Fiji fatness is also "a mark of high rank, for these people can only imagine one reason for any person being thin and spare, namely, not having enough to eat. (W. J. Smythe, 166.)

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hideous deformity known as steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the buttocks, occurs among South African Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women. Darwin says that Sir Andrew Smith

"once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to Burton, the Somal men, are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects farthest a tergo. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form." 1

The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist, according to Lander, in "the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the object."

Among the Karagué, women were exempted from hard labor because the men were anxious to have them as fat as possible. To please the men, they ate enormous quantities of bananas and drank milk by the gallon. Three of Rumanika's wives were so fat that they could not go through an ordinary door, and when they walked they needed two men each to support them.

Speke measured one of the much-admired African wonders of obesity, who was unable to stand except on all fours. Result around the arms, 1 foot 11 inches; chest, 4 feet 4 inches; thigh, 2 feet 7 inches; calf, 1 foot 8 inches; height, 5 feet 8 inches.

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Meanwhile, the daughter, a lass of sixteen, sat starknaked before us, sucking at a milk-pot, on which her father kept her at work by holding a rod in his hand; for as fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her features were lovely, but her body was round as a ball."

Yet Westermarck has the audacity to remark (259), that natural deformity and the unsymmetrical shape of the body are "regarded by every race as unfavorable to personal appearance"!

Speke also tells (370) of a girl who, a mere child when the king died, was such a favorite of his, that he left her twenty cows, in order that she might fatten upon milk after her native fashion.

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ORIENTAL IDEALS

Mungo Park declared that the Moorish women

seem to be brought up for no other purpose than that of ministering to the sensual pleasures of their imperious masters. Voluptuousness is therefore considered as their chief accomplishment. The Moors have singular ideas of feminine perfection. The gracefulness of figure and motion, and a countenance enlivened by expression, are by no means essential points in their standard: With them corpulence and beauty seem to be terms nearly synonymous: A woman of even moderate pretensions must be one who cannot walk without a slave under each arm, to support her; and a perfect beauty is a load for a camel. Many of the young girls are compelled, by their mothers, to devour a great quantity of kouskous, and drink a large bowl of camel's milk every morning. I have seen a poor girl sit crying, with the bowl at her lips, for more than an hour; and her mother, with a stick in her hand watching her all the while, and using the stick without mercy, whenever she observed that her daughter was not swallowing."

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A Somali love-song says: "You are beautiful and your limbs are fat; but if you would drink camel's milk you would be still more beautiful." Nubian girls are especially fattened for their marriage by rubbing grease over them and stuffing them with polenta and goat milk. When the process is completed they are poetically likened to a hippopotamus. In Egypt and India, where the climate naturally tends to make women thin, the fat ones are, as in Australia, the ideals of beauty, as their poets would make plain to us if it were not known otherwise. A Sanscrit poet declares proudly that his beloved is so borne down by the weight of her thighs and breasts that she cannot walk fast; and in the songs of Halâ there are numerous "sentiments" like that. The Arabian poet Amru declares rapturously that his favorite beauty has thighs so delightfully exuberant that she

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