SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN. 461 



was, he said, " just like monkeys." When Captain Cook was 

 in New Zealand, his companions contracted many temporary 

 marriages with the Maori women ; these were arranged in a 

 formal and decent manner, and were regarded, by the New 

 Zealanders at any rate, as perfectly regular and innocent.* 

 Kegnard t assures us that the Lapps preferred to marry a girl 

 that has had a child by a white man, thinking " that because 

 a man, whom they believe to be possessed of a better taste 

 than themselves, has been anxious to give marks of his love 

 for a girl of their country, she must therefore be possessed of 

 some secret merit." Even at the present day, Lady Duff 

 Gordon tells us, in her paper on the Cape,J that " there 

 are no so-called 'morals' among the coloured people, and 

 how or why should there ? It is an honor to one of these 

 girls to have a child by a white man." Taking all these 

 facts into consideration, the intercourse which has taken 

 place between Europeans and women of lower tribes must 

 not, I think, be too severely condemned, or rather the blame 

 ought to fall on us and not on them. But even among 

 savages themselves, we must admit that female virtue is, in 

 many cases, but slightly regarded ; as, indeed, is but natural 

 when women themselves are looked upon as little better than 

 domestic animals. Among many tribes, for instance the 

 South Sea Islanders and the Esquimaux, indecent dances are 

 not only common, but are countenanced by women of the 

 highest rank, to whom it does not appear to occur that there 

 is any harm or impropriety in them. According to Ulloa, the 

 Brazilians do not approve of chastity in an unmarried woman, 

 regarding it as a proof that she can have nothing attractive 

 about her. The inhabitants of the Ladrones, || and of the 

 Andaman Islands,^ come to the same conclusion; in the 



* Cook's First Voyage, vol. iii., p. 450. 



f Pinkerton. Journey to Lapland, vol. i., p. 166. 



J Vacation Tourists, 1863, p. 178. Pinkerton, vol. xiv., p. 521. 



|| Freycinet, vol. ii., p. 370. IT Trans. Ethn. Soc., New Ser., vol. ii., p. 35. 



