MARITAL JEALOUSY 147 



by the Asiatic Eskimo at certain times. It is 

 called the "ceremonial of going around" and con- 

 sists in a number of persons of both sexes turning 

 sunwise a horizontal wheel fixed to an upright pole 

 and singing to the beating of the drum. They go 

 faster and faster until having wrought themselves up 

 to a pitch of excitement they leave the wheel, and the 

 men, still running in the same direction, chase the 

 women all over the house. Every man has the right 

 to sleep that night with the woman he may have 

 succeeded in catching. 1 



In the face of these customs it can hardly be 

 suggested that the Eskimo in general pay any regard 

 to the chastity of their wives or the real paternity of 

 their children. Jealousy, it is true, is more developed 

 in some communities than others ; but it does not 

 succeed in preventing or materially reducing libertin- 

 age. Its only result is to multiply ihe changes of 

 mate. On the other hand, the religious festivals and 

 social observances of the race express and stimulate 

 the fickle passions of both sexes. The reckoning of 

 lineage through the father, so far as it obtains, means 

 no more than the reckoning of patrilineal peoples 

 through the mother's husband, the actual father being 

 unimportant for any purpose. 



In the greater part of Melanesia descent is uterine 

 and the people are divided into two or more exogamous 

 classes. Dr. Codrington, after a full discussion of this 

 organisation and of Melanesian society, arrives at the 

 conclusion that there is reason to believe that in the 

 exogamous divisions there are traces of a communal 

 system of marriage. In practice on most of the islands, 

 1 Bogoras, Jesup Exped. vii. 402. 



