80 Of the Checks to Population in Bk. i. 



that infanticide prevails, though the fact may 

 not have come to the knowledge of any of our 

 navigators. Perouse seemed to think that the 

 women in each district were common property to 

 the men of that district,* though the numbers of 

 children which he sawf would rather tend to con- 

 tradict this opinion. The fluctuations in the po- 

 pulation of Easter Island appear to have been 

 very considerable since its first discovery by 

 Roggewein in 1722, though it cannot have been 

 much affected by European intercourse. From 

 the description of Perouse it appeared, at the 

 time of his visit, to be recovering its population, 

 which had been in a very low state, probably 

 either from drought, civil dissensions, or the pre- 

 valence in an extreme degree of infanticide and 

 promiscuous intercourse. When Captain Cook 

 visited it in his second voyage, he calculated the 

 population at six or seven hundred,^ Perouse at 

 two thousand ; § and, from the number of children 

 which he observed, and the number of new houses 

 that were building, he conceived that the popula- 

 tion was on the increase. || 



In the Marianne Islands, according to Pere 

 Gobien, a very great number^" of the young men 



* Perouse, c. iv. p. 326. c. v. p. 336. 

 f Id. c. v. p. 336. 

 \ Cook's Second Voy. vol. i. p. 289. 

 § Perouse, c. v. p. 336. 

 || Ibid. 



% Une infinite de jeunes gens. — Hist, des Navigations aux 

 Terres Australes, vol. ii. p. 507. 



