362 MYSTIC ISLES 



adultery was so habitual that were bastards not made 

 welcome, there would have been much suffering by chil- 

 dren, innocent themselves. Here, as in civilization, 

 men love their bastards often more than their legitimate 

 sons and daughters. 



This prohibition against keeping one's own must have 

 arisen when there were very few inhabitants in Tahiti, 

 for it is the outcome of a natural guarding against sex- 

 ual relationship in tribes or communities where all are 

 thrown together intimately, and stringent opposition to 

 such practices needed to prevent promiscuity. One 

 must look, as in the case of taboos, deeper than the sur- 

 face for the beginning of this custom of trading babies, 

 for that is what it often amounted to — friends exchang- 

 ing offspring as they might canoes. 



It is said that the powerful sentiment among histor- 

 ical nations opposing marriage between brother and sis- 

 ter and other close kindred originated in the desire to 

 make such connections odious, to preserve virtue and 

 decency among those in hourly intimacy. Monarchs 

 and nations long refused to bend to it. The Ptolemies 

 and Pharaohs married incestuously ; Cleopatra, her 

 brother. The Ptolemies married their daughters, as did 

 Artaxerxes, who wedded Atossa. The Ballinese mar- 

 ried twins of different sex. Abraham married his half- 

 sister by the same father. Moses's father married his 

 aunt. Jacob took to wife two sisters, his own cousins. 

 In Great Russia until this century a father married his 

 son to a young woman, and then claimed her as his con- 

 cubine. When a son grew up, he followed his father's 

 example, though his wife was old and with many chil- 

 dren. The Tamils of southeast India, the Malaialais of 



