d until one of them gives in, which is
generally the case after three or four hits. Great
animal pluck is sometimes displayed.... Should a woman
ever put up her hand or a stick, etc., to ward a blow,
she would be regarded in the light of a coward" (141).

"At Genorminston, the women coming up to join a fray
give a sort of war-whoop; they will jump up in the air,
and as their feet, a little apart, touch the ground,
they knock up the dust and sand with the fighting-pole,
etc., held between their legs, very like one's early
reminiscences in the picture-books of a witch riding a
broom-stick."

"The ferocity of the women when excited exceeds that of the men," Grey
informs us (II., 314); "they deal dreadful blows at one another," etc.

For some unexplained reason--possibly a vague sense of fair play which
in time may lead to the beginnings of gallantry--there is one
occasion, an initiation ceremonial, at which women are allowed to have
their innings while the men are dancing. On this occasion, says Roth
(176),

"each woman can exercise her right of punishing any man
who may have ill-treated, abused, or hammered her, and
for whom she may have waited months or perhaps years to
chastise; for, as each pair appear around the corner at
the entrance exposed to her view, the woman and any of
her female friends may take a fighting-pole and belabor
the particular culprit to their heart's content, the
delinquent not being allowed to retaliate in any way
whatsoever--the only occasion in the whole of her life
when the woman can take the law into her own hands
without fear or favor."

WIFE STEALING

This last assertion is not strictly accurate. There are other
occasions when women take the law into their hands, especially when
men try to steal them, an every-day occurrence, at least in former
times. Thus W.H. Leigh writes of the South Australians (152):

"Their manner of courtship is one which would not be
popular among English ladies. If a chief, or any other
individual, be smitten by a female of a different
tribe, he endeavors to waylay her; and if she be
surprised in any quiet place, the ambushed lover rushes
upon her, beats her about the head with his waddy till
she becomes senseless, when she is dragged in triumph
to his hut. It sometimes happens, however, that she has