NORTH QUEENSLAND ETHNOGRAPHY ROTH. 11 



amongst her captors. Here the dusky Lothario will generally 

 get certain of his mates to lend assistance and organise a regular 

 wife-hunting expedition, for which purpose certain hip- and tail- 

 ornaments are included in the accoutrements ; lives may be lust 

 on both sides, but if successful those who have rendered help 

 will be rewarded with a promiscuous sexual orgie at the expense 

 of the captive bride. 



19. A man in the North- West Districts can exchange his true 

 blood-sister for the blood-sister of another individual, the brothers 

 or mother's brothers leading the brides to their respective future 

 homes the same night, two marriages being thus simultaneously 

 consummated. This arrangement only holds good, however, 

 provided the contracting parties are of first-initiation rank and of 

 suitable exogamous groups, and that the unanimous vote of the 

 Camp-council sanctions it. Otherwise, and in other districts, 

 although the husband has the power so to do, the selling or 

 bartering of wives, independently of course of their temporary 

 loan for veneiy, but rarely takes place ; even in the Tully River 

 District, where, on an aboriginal standard, morals are at a very 

 low ebb, this practice is not in vogue. Indeed, in making a 

 retrospect of the cases known to me, I am inclined to believe 

 that on the whole the selling of a wife is a late innovation intro- 

 duced by contamination with an undesirable class of European 

 and Asiatic settler. 



20. Throughout the North-West Districts, the female at her 

 first-initiation ceremony, which is obligatory before her marriage 

 can be legally recognised, is forced to undergo sexual connection 

 with certain of the " bucks " preseut. 1 ' ; In marriage by capture, 

 the bride has to submit to a similar ordeal from the males who 

 have lent assistance. And on the Pennefather River there is a 

 sort of "first-fruit" arrangement, 17 the husband having to allow 

 his wife promiscuous intercourse with certain " bucks " of his own 

 group before he is considered to possess full and sole rights. 



21. Divorce is permitted to the man, but seldom to the 

 woman. At Cape Bedford the process is very simple ; if the 

 husband does not want his wife, he just tells her so and lets her 

 go, there being no fighting with the man who next takes posses- 

 sion of her, she of course being now free to marry again. 

 Amongst the Bloomfield River natives, on the other hand, 

 divorce is allowed to either party, although the weaker vessel 

 does not usually resort to such a measure unless well backed by 

 powerful relatives. If the husband wishes to free himself, he 



16 Roth— Ethnol. Studies, etc , 1897— Sect. 305. 



17 Rev. N. Hey, of Mapoon, drew my attention to this. 



