plies to savages in general, as well as to
barbarians and Orientals. In his _Savage Life in Polynesia_, the Rev.
W.W. Gill remarks:

"The great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat
and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure
this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were
regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a
little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the
guardian would whip the culprit for not eating more."[115]

American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and
Polynesians. The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast
used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand
how anyone could marry such fat abominations. Concerning the South
American tribes, Humboldt says (_Trav.,_ I., 301): "In several
languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they
say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead."

FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET

The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and
tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief
criterion of a woman's charms. The hideous deformity known as
steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the buttocks, occurs among South African
Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women. Darwin says that Sir Andrew
Smith

"once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was
so immensely developed behind that when seated on level
ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along
until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various
negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to
Burton, the Somal men, 'are said to choose their wives by
ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects
farthest _a tergo_. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro
than the opposite form.'"[116]

The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist,
according to Lander, in "the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the
object."

Among the Karague, women were exempted from hard labor because the men
were anxious to have them as fat as possible. To please the men, they
ate enormous quantities of bananas and drank milk by the gallon. Three
of Rumanika's wives were so fat that they could not go through an
ordinary door, and when they walked they needed two men each to
support them.

Speke measured one of the much-admired African wonders of obesi