munity, it being
considered base of a male to engage in other labor than
that of warfare and the chase....

"When a child is to be born the mother is driven from
the village in which she lives, and is compelled to
take up her abode in some roadside hut or cave in the
open country, a scanty supply of food, furnished by her
husbands, being brought to her by the other women of
the tribe. When the child is born the mother remains
with it for one or two months, and then leaving it in a
cave, returns to the village and informs her eldest
husband of its birth and the place where she has left
it. If the child is a male, some consideration is shown
to her; should it be a female, however, her lot is
frightful, for aside from the severe beating to which
she is subjected by her husband, she suffers the scorn
and contumely of the rest of the tribe. If a male
child, the husband goes to the cave and brings it back
to the village; if it is of the opposite sex he is left
to his own volition; sometimes he returns with the
female infant; as often he ignores it entirely and
allows it to perish, or may dispose of it to some other
man as a prospective wife."[26]

In Corea women are so little esteemed that they do not even receive
separate names, and a husband considers it an act of condescension to
speak to his wife. When a young man of the ruling classes marries, he
spends three or four days with his bride, then returns to his
concubine, "in order to prove that he does not care much for the
bride." (Ploss, II., 434.) "The condition of Chinese women is most
pitiable," writes the Abbe Hue:

"Suffering, privation, contempt, all kinds of misery
and degradation, seize on her in the cradle, and
accompany her to the tomb. Her birth is commonly
regarded as a humiliation and a disgrace to the
family--an evident sign of the malediction of heaven.
If she be not immediately suffocated, a girl is
regarded and treated as a creature radically
despicable, and scarcely belonging to the human race."

He adds that if a bridegroom dies, the most honorable course for the
bride is to commit suicide. Even the Japanese, so highly civilized in
some respects, look down on women with unfeigned contempt, likening
themselves to heaven and the women to earth. There are ten stations on
the way up the sacred mount F