cted the use of candles to genuine necessity, and the
lovers had but little opportunity to meet alone. All this may have been
true, but the custom led to deplorable results. Where it originated is
uncertain. The people of Connecticut insisted that it was brought to
them from Cape Cod and from the Dutch of New York City, and, in return,
the Dutch declared it began near Cape Cod. The idea seems monstrous to
us of to-day; but in colonial times it was looked upon with much
leniency, and adultery between espoused persons was punished much more
lightly than the same crime between persons not engaged.

A peculiar phase of immorality among colonial women of the South cannot
well be ignored. As mentioned in earlier pages, there was naturally a
rough element among the indented women imported into Virginia and South
Carolina, and, strange to say, not a few of these women were attracted
into sexual relations with the negro slaves of the plantation. If these
slaves had been mulattoes instead of genuinely black, half-savage beings
not long removed from Africa, or if the relation had been between an
indented white man of low rank and a negro woman, there would not have
been so great cause for wonder; but we cannot altogether agree with
Bruce, who in his study, _The Economic History of Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century_, says:

"It is no ground for surprise that in the seventeenth century there were
instances of criminal intimacy between white women and negroes. Many of
the former had only recently arrived from England, and were, therefore,
comparatively free from the race prejudice that was so likely to develop
upon close association with the African for a great length of time. The
class of white women who were required to work in the fields belonged to
the lowest rank in point of character. Not having been born in Virginia
and not having thus acquired from birth a repugnance to association with
the Africans upon a footing of social equality, they yielded to the
temptations of the situations in which they were placed. The offence,
whether committed by a native or an imported white woman, was an act of
personal degradation that was condemned by public sentiment with as much
severity in the seventeenth century as at all subsequent
periods...."[291]

Near the populous centers such relationships were sure to meet with
swift punishment; but in the more remote districts such a custom might
exist for years and meant nothing less than pro