192 A MISSION TO VITI. 
one of the crimes generally punished with death; and 
Kuruduadua himself had not long ago one of his ne- 
phews clubbed for taking undue liberties with one of 
his wives. What is called amongst us the “social 
evil,” and thought to be an unnatural excrescence of 
our artificial state of society, is not unknown amongst 
these barbarous races. There being no streets, nymphs 
of a certain description waylay travellers on the high 
roads—a direct refutation of the Mormon argument, 
that “polygamy is the only cure for this corruption of 
our great cities.” 
Fijians have been charged with want of natural affec- 
tion; and the strangulation of widows on the death of 
their husbands, and the killing of parents when beset 
with the infirmities of old-age by the hands of their 
own children, have been advanced as proofs thereof. 
Yet these facts are perhaps the best arguments that 
human nature is not different in the Fijis than else- 
where. Affection for the departed—of course, mis- 
taken affection—prompted their relatives or friends to 
dispatch widows at the time of their husbands’ burial; 
and the widows themselves have been known to seek 
death by their own hands, if their relatives refused 
to fulfil that duty which custom imposed upon them. 
Even widowers, in the depth of their grief, have fre- 
quently terminated their existence, when deprived of a 
dearly beloved wife. On the death of a near relative 
people will cut off joints of their fingers in order to 
demonstrate their grief, and they will mourn for a long 
time for their lost ones. The sentiment of friendship is 
strongly developed, and there is scarcely a man who has 
