“Occasionally, though rarely,” and then only for a few years, is an Australian woman attractive from our point of view.  As a rule she is very much the reverse—­dirty, thin-limbed, course-featured, ungainly in every way;[152] and Eyre tells us why this is so.  The extremities of the women, he says, are more attenuated than those of the men; probably because “like most other savages, the Australian looks upon his wife as a slave,” makes her undergo great privations and do all the hard work, such as bringing in wood and water, tending the children, carrying all the movable property while on the march, often even her husband’s weapons: 

“In wet weather she attends to all the outside work, whilst her lord and master is snugly seated at the fire.  If there is a scarcity of food, she has to endure the pangs of hunger, often, perhaps, in addition to ill-treatment and abuse.  No wonder, then, that the females, and especially the younger ones (for it is then they are exposed to the greatest hardships), are not so fully or so roundly developed in person as the men.”

The rule that races admire those personal characteristics which climate and circumstances have impressed on them is not borne out among Australians.  An arid soil and a desiccating climate make them thin as a race, but they do not admire thinness.  “Long-legged,” “thin-legged,” are favorite terms of abuse among them, and Grey once heard a native sing scornfully

     Oh, what a leg,

* * * * *

     You kangaroo-footed churl!

Nor is it beauty, in our sense of the word, that attracts them, but fat, as in Africa and the Orient.  I have previously quoted Brough Smyth’s assertion that an Australian woman, however old and ugly, is in constant danger of being stolen if she is fat.  That women have the same standard of “taste,” appears from the statement of H.E.A.  Meyer (189), that the principal reason why the men anoint themselves with grease and ochre is that it makes them look fat and “gives them an air of importance in the eyes of the women, for they admire a fat man however ugly.”  But whereas these men admire a fat woman for sensual reasons, the women’s preference is based on utilitarian motives.  Low as their reasoning powers are, they are shrewd enough to reflect that a man who is in good condition proves thereby that he is “somebody”—­that he can hunt and will be able to bring home some meat for his wife too.  This interpretation is borne out by what was said on a previous page (278) about one of the reasons why corpulence is valued in Fiji, and also by an amusing incident related by the eminent Australian explorer George Grey (II., 93).  He had reproached his native guide with not knowing anything, when the guide replied: 

“I know nothing!  I know how to keep myself fat; the young women look at me and say, ’Imbat is very handsome, he is fat’—­they will look at you and say, ’He not good—­long legs—­what do you know?  Where is your fat?  What for do you know so much, if you can’t keep fat?”

CRUEL TREATMENT OF WOMEN