96 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



Awankonde of Lake Nyassa and the Wafiomi of 

 Eastern Africa also seclude girls for a considerable 

 period, apparently in the dark. On New Pomerania, 

 the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, the 

 Sulka bride is taken to her future husband's parents 

 some time before the wedding. They keep her 

 secluded in a cell of their house, where she is tattooed 

 and where she is required to observe abstinence from 

 certain foods and can make no fire. On going out for 

 any purpose she must be covered up from head to 

 foot, and must whistle that men may get out of her 

 way. Thus she passes the time until the wedding- 

 day. 1 



On the island of Mabuiag, in Torres Straits, the 

 girl is put into a dark corner of her parents' house 

 surrounded with bushes, which are piled up so high 

 around her that only her head is visible. Here she 

 remains for three months. The sun may not shine on 

 her; or as one of the natives expressed it, "he can't 

 see daytime, he stop inside dark." On the adjacent 

 island of Muralug, a rough bower-like hut is built for 

 the girl on the beach, and she lies inside, in a shallow 

 excavation in the sand. She is not liberated for two 

 months. On the Cape York Peninsula of Australia, 

 a girl at puberty has to lie in a humpy, or shelter, for 

 from four to six weeks. She may not see the sun, 

 and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until 

 the sun has disappeared, "so sun don't strike him." 

 Similar but less lengthy is the seclusion among the 

 Otati of the neighbourhood of Gape Granville, on the 

 east of the same peninsula and the Uiyumkwi of Red 

 Island, the former only lasting during the flow of the 

 1 Arch. Antkrop. N.S. i. 210. 



