corner of the tribal territory, but they are soon
overtaken, the female cruelly beaten, or wounded with a
spear, the man in most cases remaining unpunished. Very
seldom are men allowed to retain as wives their
partners in these escapades. Though I have been
acquainted with many tribes, and heard matters of the
sort talked over in several of them, I never knew _but
three instances of permanent runaway matches_; two in
which men obtained as wives women already married in
the tribe, and one case in which the woman was a
stranger."

William Jackman, who was held as a captive by the natives for
seventeen months, tells a similar story. Elopements, he says (174),
are usually with wives. The couple escape to a distant tribe and
remain a few months--_rarely more than seven or eight_, so far as he
observed; then the faithless wife is returned to her husband and the
elopers are punished more or less severely. "At times," we read in
Spencer and Gillen (556, 558)

"the eloping couple are at once followed up and then,
if caught, the woman is, if not killed on the spot, at
all events treated in such a way that any further
attempt at elopement on her part is not likely to take
place."

Sometimes the husband seems glad to have got rid of his wife, for when
the elopers return to camp he first has his revenge by cutting the
legs and body of both and then he cries "You keep altogether, I throw
away, I throw away."

It is instructive to note with what ingenuity the natives seek to
prevent matches based on mutual inclination. Taplin says (11) of the
Narrinyeri that "a young woman who goes away with a man and lives with
him as his wife without the consent of her relatives is regarded as
very little better than a prostitute." Among these same Narrinyeri,
says Gason, "it is considered disgraceful for a woman to take a
husband who has given no other woman for her." (Bonwick, 245.) The
deliberate animosity against free choice is emphasized by a statement
in Brough Smyth (79), that if the owner of an eloping female suspects
that she favored the man she eloped with, "he will not hesitate to
maim or kill her." She must have no choice or preference of her own,
under any circumstances. It must be remembered, too, that even an
actual elopement by no means proves that the woman is following a
special inclination. She may be merely anxious to get away from a
cruel or super