ving his friends to sustain the attacks of the women, who
always rallied fiercely to the defence of the bride. The latter made it
a point of honor, indeed, to scream loudly for help; and, however
doubtful may have been her good faith, the other women considered it a
duty to their sex to accept her protests as implicit and to visit her
rape upon the heads of the allies of the lover, which allies rarely
escaped with unscarred faces. Having covered the retreat of the ardent
swain, the friends then followed him to the sylvan haunts which he
sought for concealment and from which he emerged some two or three days
later with his captive, now a willing bride. No other ceremony was
needful; but, if the parents of the girl were really averse to the match
and rallied in time to prevent the wooer from gaining the shelter of the
woods with his captive, there was no marriage; if, on the other hand,
the thicket was safely gained, the marriage could not be afterward
annulled. After the emergence of the wedded pair from their solitude,
the friends of the husband called upon him to congratulate him and to
offer him gifts, most of which had been pledged beforehand. These
presents were then conveyed in procession to the father of the bride,
who, if he considered that he had been paid full value for his daughter,
took the bridegroom by the hand and declared his delight at the
alliance. The mother, however, was supposed to be so angered with her
son-in-law for the robbery of her child that she would not even speak to
him or so much as look at him; and though she generally relented so far
as to tell her daughter to ask her husband if he were not hungry, and
upon receiving an affirmative answer proceeded to cook a feast for the
assembled company, nevertheless for years after the marriage she would
never speak face to face with her son-in-law, though with her back
turned to him she would converse with him with entire freedom. This
formal resentment on the part of the mother-in-law seems to indicate a
recognized status on the part of the _mater familias_, since it was
theoretically in opposition to the will of the _pater familias_ and
therefore in some sense a declaration of independence.

Divorce was known among the Araucanians, and the discarded wife was sent
back to her father's house with full liberty to marry whom else she
would; but in such case the second husband was compelled to pay to the
first the full price which the woman originally c