HIMALAYA WOMEN. 
45 
gentler sex in every country — is perhaps accelerated 
by constant exposure to the climate they live in, 
which is remarkable for very sudden and severe 
changes of temperature. Here they are not secluded 
as among the higher castes of Hindostan, and that 
fierce jealousy which is a dominant feeling of the 
Hindoo is entirely unknown in these hills,, where the 
women enjoy a liberty as morally pernicious as it is 
socially degrading and of which they avail themselves 
to the fullest extent. They mix with the men without 
the slightest reservation/ and this unlimited freedom 
of intercourse gives them a confidence and self-posses- 
sion before strangers peculiar only to the highest classes 
of their sex in the most civilized countries. 
The wives and daughters of these highlanders are 
their most valuable property : they labour in the farms 
with the ardour and address of men, and are thus 
wholly free from the slavish seclusion to which Hindoo 
and Mahomedan women are usually subjected. Their 
moral relaxation, however, subjects them to an evil 
worse than bondage. They soon exchange the deli- 
cate feelings of their sex for those which reduce them 
from all that is lovely in woman, to all that is de- 
based. Chastity with them has neither 
“ A local habitation nor a name,” 
They are, however, neither beloved nor honoured by 
the men, who, though they set no value upon chas- 
tity, cannot regard those who uniformly violate it. 
Thus, though they do not check the sensuality of 
their females, they nevertheless do not respect it. 
The permission to do wrong does not always imply 
