860 MYSTIC ISLES 



full equal. They wound their husbands around their 

 fingers or treated them cruelly in many instances, as- 

 tonishing the whites by their independence. Only re- 

 ligion, the taboos, held them in any restraint. 



If a queen bore a child by an unknown father, the 

 child was as royal as if the descendant of a long line 

 of kings ; but if the father was notoriously a commoner, 

 the child remained a prince, though not so high of rank 

 as if his father had been an Arii. If a king had chil- 

 dren by a woman beneath his rank, they had no rights 

 from their father, but held a mixed position propor- 

 tioned to the power of the father. He established their 

 rank by his personal prestige, as the kings of Europe 

 forced their bastards on the courts. Sixty years ago 

 Tamatoa, King of Raiatea of the Society Islands, him- 

 self the highest born of all the chiefs of the archipelago, 

 was forced to adopt a child of King Pomare of Tahiti 

 to succeed him because his own children were by a 

 woman of the people. 



The woman thus had an advantage over the man in 

 being able to transmit her rank to her children, a sur- 

 vival of the matriarchate custom once ruling the world. 

 Polygamy was rarely indulged, though not forbidden. 

 A chief here and there might have two or three wives. 

 Women were allowed only one husband, but often 

 avowed lovers were tolerated, if not feared, by the hus- 

 band. Mr. Banks, president of the Royal Astronomical 

 Society of England, was horrified after he had made 

 love to Queen Oberea of Papara in the absence of her 

 husband to find her attendant was a cavaliere servente. 

 His Anglican morals were shocked. He had thought 

 himself the only male sinner by her complacence. 



