cs which
climate and circumstances have impressed on them is not borne out
among Australians. An arid soil and a desiccating climate make them
thin as a race, but they do not admire thinness. "Long-legged,"
"thin-legged," are favorite terms of abuse among them, and Grey once
heard a native sing scornfully

Oh, what a leg,

* * * * *

You kangaroo-footed churl!

Nor is it beauty, in our sense of the word, that attracts them, but
fat, as in Africa and the Orient. I have previously quoted Brough
Smyth's assertion that an Australian woman, however old and ugly, is
in constant danger of being stolen if she is fat. That women have the
same standard of "taste," appears from the statement of H.E.A. Meyer
(189), that the principal reason why the men anoint themselves with
grease and ochre is that it makes them look fat and "gives them an air
of importance in the eyes of the women, for they admire a fat man
however ugly." But whereas these men admire a fat woman for sensual
reasons, the women's preference is based on utilitarian motives. Low
as their reasoning powers are, they are shrewd enough to reflect that
a man who is in good condition proves thereby that he is
"somebody"--that he can hunt and will be able to bring home some meat
for his wife too. This interpretation is borne out by what was said on
a previous page (278) about one of the reasons why corpulence is
valued in Fiji, and also by an amusing incident related by the eminent
Australian explorer George Grey (II., 93). He had reproached his
native guide with not knowing anything, when the guide replied:

"I know nothing! I know how to keep myself fat; the
young women look at me and say, 'Imbat is very
handsome, he is fat'--they will look at you and say,
'He not good--long legs--what do you know? Where is
your fat? What for do you know so much, if you can't
keep fat?"

CRUEL TREATMENT OF WOMEN

Eyre was no doubt right in his suggestion that the inferiority of
Australian women to the men in personal appearance was due to the
privations and hardships to which the women were subjected. Much as
the men admire fat in a woman, they are either too ignorant, or too
selfish otherwise, to allow them to grow fat in idleness. Women in
Australia never exist for their own sake but solely for the
convenience of the men. "The man," says the Rev. H.E.A. Meyer (11),
"regarding them more as slaves than