the encounters which
result from these she is almost certain to receive some violent injury,
for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and in the event of
her refusing throws a spear at her. The early life of a young woman at
all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity
to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange
families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females amongst
whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a
form of unusual grace and elegance but it is marked and scarred by the
furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred
miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to
distant and more distant points.

These various circumstances render miscarriages more frequent amongst
these uncivilized tribes than amongst European nations, and the first
years and bloom of a female generally elapse before she has any children;
but then a fresh cause exists to prevent their having very large
families, which is that, from the nature of the food used by the natives,
it is necessary that a child should have good strong teeth before it can
be even partially weaned. The native women therefore suckle their
children until they are past the age of two or three years, and it is by
no means uncommon to see a fine healthy child leave off playing and run
up to its mother to take the breast.

The native women suffer much less pain during the period of labour than
Europeans; directly the child is born, it is wrapped in opossum skins,
and strings made of the fur of this animal are tied like bracelets round
the infant's wrists and ankles, with the intention of rendering it, by
some supernatural means, a stronger and a finer child. They are always
much prouder of a male than of a female child.

AVERAGE NUMBERS AND PROPORTION OF BIRTHS.

Forty-one females, of whose families I have obtained (from themselves and
others) lists upon the accuracy of which I can rely, had 188 children, or
about 4.6 children each. The greatest number born by any one female was
7, and only three had had so large a family as this; but with the
exception of one woman they had all born more than one child. All those
who were included in this list were past the age of child-bearing at the
time it was drawn up.

To ascertain the proportion of male to female children I drew up another
list of 222 births, and out of these there w