Civil and Savage Life Compared. 



former condition, how they must hate the sight 

 of a white man ! 



Among almost all South Sea Islanders chastity 

 was considered as a necessary virtue with the 

 young women, and in some cases, even after 

 their contact with foreigners, they were reserved 

 among themselves. Westermarck says : " In 

 Samoa the girls were allowed to cohabit with 

 foreigners but not with their own countrymen, 

 and the chastity of the chiefs daughters was the 

 pride of the tribe. 



In Fiji great continence prevailed ; they had a 

 system peculiarly their own, a description of 

 which I reserve for another chapter. 



Although in many of these places the natives 

 wear very scant covering, New Britain was the 

 only place I ever visited where the people of 

 both sexes went entirely nude. This condition, 

 shocking as it may appear to us, seemed quite 

 natural to them ; they did not appear to be in 

 any way disconcerted before strangers, and were 

 as modest in their behaviour as any people I 

 know. 



A party of five of us went on an expedition to 

 a lake in the interior to shoot casowaries. I saw 

 nothing indecent on the part of the natives the 

 whole time we were on shore. At night we 

 would find one of the most commodious huts pre- 

 pared for us in the villages that we passed through, 

 and it was remarkable to find that as soon as it 

 began to get dark, the women withdrew from the 

 parts of the villages in which the men slept, to 

 huts of their own. 



The separation of the sexes at night appears to 



F 2 51 



