232 ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
He found it to be quite clean, but so small as to provide 
only room for a girl to sit or lie down on the bamboo floor 
in a crouched position. It contained nothing but a few 
lengths of bamboo for holding water. When the door was 
shut, it must have been quite dark inside. They were never 
allowed to come out except once a day, to bathe in a dish 
or wooden bowl placed close to each cage. 
They are placed in these cages when quite young, and 
must remain there until they are young women, when they 
are taken out, and have each a great marriage feast provided 
for them. II! or well, they must not leave these cages until 
the time has come for this feast to be provided. 
Fortunately, a great many of the families cannot afford 
to bear the expense which this barbarous custom entails, 
and so not all the girls of the tribe are called upon to endure 
its horrors. Little wonder is it that Mr. Brown wrote many 
years afterward, “I feel very sad whenever I think about 
these poor girls, and shudder at the idea of our own little 
girls at home being subjected to such treatment.” Yet such 
is the darkness and degradation of the savage heathen of 
the South Seas. 
And it must not be supposed that such doing is yet a thing 
of the past. Tribes of savage, cannibal heathen there still 
are in some of the islands, who are as yet unreached by the 
glorious gospel of our Saviour Jesus. There women and 
girls are still made to endure all that the barbarous customs 
of their heathenism demand, and they can never know free- 
dom from these dreadful cruelties until the gospel of God 
makes them free in Christ Jesus. 
May the time soon come when these fair lands shall all 
have been brought under the benign rule of the Man of 
Calvary, and in every effort to bring this to pass, may the 
richest blessings of heaven fall upon all who seek to make 
known to such benighted souls the goodness and mercy and 
tenderness of our God! 
