FEMALE DEGRADATION. 129 
on such occasions, were unknown to them, as well 
as all that we are accustomed to distinguish by the 
endearing appellation of domestic happiness. The 
institutes of Oro and Tane inexorably required, 
not only that the wife should not eat those kinds 
of food of which the husband partook, but that she 
should not eat in the same place, or prepare her 
food at the same fire. This restriction applied not 
only to the wife, with regard to her husband, but 
to all the individuals of the female sex, from their 
birth to their death. In sickness or pain, or 
whatever other circumstances, the mother, the wife, 
the sister, or the daughter, might be brought into, 
it was never relaxed. The men, especially those 
who occasionally attended on the services of idol 
worship in the temple, were considered ra , or 
sacred ; while the female sex was considered noa , 
or common : the men were allowed to eat the flesh 
of the pig, and of fowls, and a variety of fish, 
cocoa-nuts, and plantains, and whatever was pre¬ 
sented as an offering to the gods : these the females, 
on pain of death, were forbidden to touch; as it 
was supposed, they would pollute them. The 
fires at which the men's food was cooked, were 
also sacred, and were forbidden to be used by the 
females. The baskets in which their provision 
was kept, and the house in which the men ate, 
were also sacred, and prohibited to the females 
under the same cruel penalty. Hence the inferior 
food, both for wives, daughters, &c. was cooked 
at separate fires, deposited in distinct baskets, and 
eaten in lonely solitude by the females, in little 
huts erected for the purpose. 
The most offensive and frequent imprecations 
which the men were accustomed to use towards 
each other, referred also to this degraded condition 
K 
