[43] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 244 _sq._

[44] D. Tyerman and G. Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 273 _sq._

The Areoi Society comprised women as well as men,[45] but the accounts
given of the proportion of the sexes and their relations to each other
are conflicting. According to one account, the male members outnumbered
the women as five to one.[46] The first missionaries reported that the
Areois were said to have each two or three wives, whom they exchanged
with each other.[47] According to Cook, every woman was common to every
man[48]; and Turnbull affirmed that the community of women was the very
principle of their union.[49] On the other hand, the naturalist George
Forster, who accompanied Captain Cook, observes: "We have been told a
wanton tale of promiscuous embraces, where every woman is common to
every man: but when we enquired for a confirmation of this story from
the natives, we were soon convinced that it must, like many others, be
considered as the groundless invention of a traveller's gay fancy."[50]
Again, Ellis observes that, "although addicted to every kind of
licentiousness themselves, each Areoi had his own wife, who was also a
member of the Society; and so jealous were they in this respect, that
improper conduct towards the wife of one of their own number, was
sometimes punished with death."[51] Yet the same writer speaks of "the
mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more than bestial degradation" to
which the Areois were at times addicted; and he says that "in some of
their meetings, they appear to have placed their invention on the rack,
to discover the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be
guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting
practices."[52]

[45] G. Forster, _op. cit._ ii. 128.

[46] D. Tyerman and G. Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 326.

[47] J. Wilson, _op. cit._ p. 174.

[48] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 193 _sq._

[49] J. Turnbull, _Voyage round the World_, p. 364.

[50] G. Forster, _op. cit._ ii. 132.

[51] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 239.

[52] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 243.

It was a rule of the Society that no member should have any children;
hence the first injunction given to a new member was to murder his
offspring. Any infant that might afterwards be born to him was strangled
at birth.[53] If a woman spared her child and could induce a man to
father it, "both the man and the woman, being deemed by this act to have
appropria