women "often have bitter quarrels about
men whom they love and are anxious to marry. If the husband is
unfaithful, the wife frequently becomes greatly enraged."

George Grey (II., 312-14) gives an amusing sketch of an aboriginal
scene of conjugal bliss. Weerang, an old man, has four wives, the last
of whom, just added to the harem, gets all his attention. This excites
the anger of one of the older ones, who reproaches the husband with
having stolen her, an unwilling bride, from another and better man.
"May the sorcerer," she adds, "bite and tear her whom you have now
taken to your bed. Here am I, rebuking young men who dare to look at
me, while she, your favorite, replete with arts and wiles, dishonors
you." This last insinuation is too much for the young favorite, who
retorts by calling her a liar and declaring that she has often seen
her exchanging nods and winks with her paramour. The rival's answer is
a blow with her stick. A general engagement follows, which the old man
finally ends by beating several of the wives severely about the head
with a hammer.[171]

PUGNACIOUS FEMALES

Jealousy is capable of converting even civilized women into fiends;
all the more these bush women, who have few opportunities for
cultivating the gentler feminine qualities. Indeed, so masculine are
these women that were it not for woman's natural inferiority in
strength their tyrants might find it hard to subdue them. Bulmer
says[172] that

"as a rule both husband and wife had fearful tempers;
there was no bearing and forbearing. When they
quarrelled it was a matter of the strongest conquering,
for neither would give in."

Describing a native fight over some trifling cause Taplin says (71):

"Women were dancing about naked, casting dust in the
air, hurling obscene language at their enemies, and
encouraging their friends. It was a perfect tempest of
rage."

Roth says of the Queensland natives that the women fight like men,
with thick, heavy fighting poles, four feet long.

"One of the combatants, with her hands between her
knees, supposing that only one stick is available,
ducks her head slightly--almost in the position of a
school-boy playing leap-frog, and waits for her
adversary's blow, which she receives on the top of her
head. The attitudes are now reversed, and the one just
attacked is now the attacking party. Blow for blow is
thus alternate