tween two contending parties, would soon be divested of every rag of clothing, and would then be seized by her head, hair, or limbs," her "cries and shrieks would be unheeded by her savage friends. In this way the poor creature was often nearly torn to pieces. These savage contests sometimes ended in the strongest party bearing off in triumph the naked person of the bride. In some cases, after a long season of suffering, she recovered, to be given to a person for whom she had no affection, in others to die within a few hours or days from the injuries which she had received. But it was not uncommon for the weaker party, when they found they could not prevail, for one of them to put an end to the contest by suddenly plunging his spear into the woman's bosom to hinder her from becoming the property of another."

After giving this account on page 163 of the Maori's "ancient and most general way" of obtaining a wife—which puts him below the most ferocious brutes, since those at least spare their females-the same writer informs us on page 338 that there are few races who treat their women with more deference than the Maori !" If that is so, it can only be due to the influence of the whites, since all the testimony indicates that the unadulterated Maori-with whom alone we are here concerned-did not treat them with great respect," nor pay any deference to them whatever. The cruel method of capture described above was so general that, as Taylor himself tells us, the native term for courtship was he aru aru, literally, a following or pursuing after; and there was also a special expression for this struggling of two suitors for a girl-he puna rua. As for their "great respect" for women, they do not allow them to eat with the men. A chief, says Angas (II., 110), "will sometimes permit his favorite wife to eat with him, though not out of the same dish." Ellis relates (III., 253) that New Zealanders are "addicted to the greatest vices that stain the human character-treachery, cannibalism, infanticide, and murder." The women caught in battle, as well as the men, were, he says, enslaved or eaten. "Sometimes they chopped off the legs and arms and otherwise mangled the body before they put the victim to death." Concubines had to do service as household drudges.

A man

on dying would bequeath his wives to his brother. No land was bequeathed to female children. The real Maori feeling toward women is brought out in the answer given to a sister who went to her brothers to ask for a share of the lands of the family: "Why, you're only a slave to blow up your husband's fire." (Shortland, 119, 255-58.)

MAORI MORALS AND CAPACITY FOR LOVE

When Hawkesworth visited New Zealand with Captain Cook, he one day came accidentally across some women who were fishing, and who had thrown off their last garments. When they saw him they were as confused and distressed as Diana and her nymphs; they hid among the rocks and crouched down in the sea until they had made and put on girdles of seaweeds (456). "There are instances," writes William Brown (36-37), "of women committing suicide from its being said that they had been seen naked. A chief's wife took her own life because she had been hung up by the heels and beaten in the presence of the whole tribe."

Shall we conclude from this that the Maoris were genuinely modest and perhaps capable of that delicacy in regard to sexual matters which is a prerequisite of sentimental love? What is modesty? The Century Dictionary says it is "decorous feeling or behavior; purity or delicacy of thought or manner; reserve proceeding from pure or chaste character;" and the Encyclopedic Dictionary defines it as "chastity; purity of manners; decency; freedom from lewdness or unchastity." Now, Maori modesty, if such it may be called, was only skin deep. Living in a colder climate than other Polynesians, it became customary among them to wear more clothing; and what custom prescribes must be obeyed to the letter among all these peoples, be the ordained dress merely a loin cloth or a necklace, or a cover for the back only, or full dress. It does not argue true modesty on the part of a Maori woman to cover those parts of her body which custom orders her to cover, any more than it argues true modesty on the part of an Oriental barbarian to cover her face only, on meeting a

man, leaving the rest of her body exposed. Nor does suicide. prove anything, since it is known that the lower races indulge in self-slaughter for as trivial causes as they do in the slaughter of others. True modesty, as defined above, is not a Maori characteristic. The evidence on this point is too abundant to quote in full.

Shortland (126-27) describes in detail all of the ceremonies which were in former days the pastimes of the New Zealanders, and which accompanied the singing of their haka or 'love-songs," to which reference has already been made. In the front were seated three elderly ladies and behind them in rows, eight or ten in a row, and five or six ranks deep, sat the best born young belles of the town," who supplied the poem and the music for the haka pantomime:

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"The haka is not a modest exhibition, but the reverse; and, on this occasion, two of the old ladies who stood in front accompanied the music by movements of the arms and body, their postures being often disgustingly lascivious. However, they suited the taste of the audience, who rewarded the performers at such times with the applause they desired. It was altogether as ungodly a scene as can well be

imagined."

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The same author, who lived among the natives several years, says (120) that "before marriage the greatest license is permitted to young females. The more admirers they can attract and the greater their reputation for intrigue, the fairer is their chance of making an advantageous match." William Brown writes (35) that among the Maoris chastity is not deemed one of the virtues; and a lady before marriage may be as liberal of her favors as she pleased without incurring censure." "As a rule," writes E. Tregear in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1889), "the girls had great license in the way of lovers. I don't think the young woman knew when she was a virgin, for she had love-affairs with the boys from the cradle. This does not apply, of course, to every individual case-some girls are born proud, and either kept to one sweetheart or had none, but this was rare." After marriage a woman was expected to remain faithful to

her husband, but of course not from any regard for chastity, but because she was his private property. Like so many other uncivilized races the Maori saw no impropriety in lending his wife to a friend. (Tregear, 104.)

The faces of Maori women were always wet with red ochre and oil. Both sexes anointed their hair (which was vermininfested) with rancid shark's oil, so that they were as disagreeable to the smell as Hottentots. (Hawkesworth, 451-53.) They were cannibals, not from necessity, but for the love of human flesh, though they did not, like the Australians, eat their own relatives. Food, says Thompson (I., 160), affected them "as it does wild beasts." They practised infanticide, killed cripples, abandoned the sick-in a word, they displayed a coarseness, a lack of delicacy, in sexual and other matters, which makes it simply absurd to suppose they could have loved as we love, with our altruistic feeling of sympathy and affection. William Brown says (38) that mothers showed none of that doting fondness for their children common elsewhere, and that they suckled pigs and pups with "affection." "Should a husband quarrel with his wife, she would not hesitate to kill her children, merely to annoy him" (41).

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They are totally devoid of natural affection." The men "appear to care little for their wives," apparently from "a want of that sympathy between the sexes which is the source of the delicate attentions paid by the male to the female in most civilized countries. In my own experience I have seen only one instance where there was any perceptible attachment between husband and wife. To all appearance they behave to each other as if they were not at all related; and it not infrequently happens that they sleep in different places before the termination of the first week of their marriage." Thus even in the romantic isles of the Pacific we seek in vain for true love. Let us now see whether the vast continent of North and South America will bring us any nearer to our goal.

HOW AMERICAN INDIANS LOVE

"On the subject of love no persons have been less understood than the Indians," wrote Thomas Ashe in 1806 (271). "It is said of them that they have no affection, and that the intercourse of the sexes is sustained by a brutal passion remote from tenderness and sensibility. This is one of the many gross errors which have been propagated to calumniate these innocent people." Waitz remarks (III., 102): “How much alike human nature is everywhere is evinced by the remarkable circumstance that notwithstanding the degradation of woman, cases of romantic love are not even very rare" among Indians. "Their languages," writes Professor Brinton (R. P., 54), "supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life.

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Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a capability for romantic love such as would do credit to a modern novel. This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being something foreign to those varieties of man." The Indians, says Catlin (V. A. I., I., 121), are not in the least behind us in conjugal, in filial. and in paternal affection." In the preface to Mrs. Eastman's Life and Legend of the Sioux, Mrs. Kirkman exclaims that "in spite of all that renders gross and mechanical their ordinary mode of marrying and giving in marriage, instances are not rare among them of love as true, as fiery, and as fatal as that of the most exalted hero of romance." Let us listen to a few of the tales of Indian love, as recorded by Schoolcraft.1

Considerations of space compel me here, as in other cases, to condense the stories; but I conscientiously and purposely retain all the sentimental passages and expressions.

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