he proper understanding of the
sexual relations of men and women, that it cannot be wholly ignored.

Among the negroes of Surinam a woman must live in solitude during the time
of her period; it is dangerous for any man or woman to approach her, and
when she sees a person coming near she cries out anxiously: "_Mi kay! Mi
kay!_"--I am unclean! I am unclean! Throughout the world we find traces of
the custom of which this is a typical example, but we must not too hastily
assume that this custom is evidence of the inferior position occupied by
semi-civilized women. It is necessary to take a broad view, not only of
the beliefs of semi-civilized man regarding menstruation, but of his
general beliefs regarding the supernatural forces of the world.

There is no fragment of folk-lore so familiar to the European world as
that which connects woman with the serpent. It is, indeed, one of the
foundation stones of Christian theology.[354] Yet there is no fragment of
folk-lore which remains more obscure. How has it happened that in all
parts of the world the snake or his congeners, the lizard and the
crocodile, have been credited with some design, sinister or erotic, on
women?

Of the wide prevalence of the belief there can be no doubt. Among the Port
Lincoln tribe of South Australia a lizard is said to have divided man from
woman.[355] Among the Chiriguanos of Bolivia, on the appearance of
menstruation, old women ran about with sticks to hunt the snake that had
wounded the girl. Frazer, who quotes this example from the "_Lettres
edifiantes et curieuses_," also refers to a modern Greek folk-tale,
according to which a princess at puberty must not let the sun shine upon
her, or she would be turned into a lizard.[356] The lizard was a sexual
symbol among the Mexicans. In some parts of Brazil at the onset of puberty
a girl must not go into the woods for fear of the amorous attacks of
snakes, and so it is also among the Macusi Indians of British Guiana,
according to Schomburgk. Among the Basutos of South Africa the young girls
must dance around the clay image of a snake. In Polynesian mythology the
lizard is a very sacred animal, and legends represent women as often
giving birth to lizards.[357] At a widely remote spot, in Bengal, if you
dream of a snake a child will be born to you, reports Sarat Chandra
Mitra.[358] In the Berlin Museum fuer Volkerkunde there is a carved wooden
figure from New Guinea of a woman into whose vulva a crocodile