“is a strange native allowed to approach the fire of the married.”  “The young men and boys of ten years of age and upward are obliged to sleep in their portion of the encampment.”

From such testimony one might infer that female chastity is successfully guarded; but the writers quoted themselves take care to dispel that illusion.  Grey tells us that (in spite of these arrangements) “the young females are much addicted to intrigue;” and again (248): 

“Should a female be possessed of considerable personal attractions, the first years of her life must necessarily be very unhappy.  In her early infancy she is betrothed to some man, even at this period advanced in years, and by whom, as she approaches the age of puberty, she is watched with a degree of vigilance and care, which increases in proportion to the disparity of years between them; it is probably from this circumstance that so many of them are addicted to intrigues, in which if they are detected by their husbands, death or a spear through some portion of the body is their certain fate.”

And Curr shows in the following (109) how far the attempts at seclusion are from succeeding in enforcing chastity: 

“Notwithstanding the savage jealousy, varied by occasional degrading complaisance on the part of the husband, there is more or less intrigue in every camp; and the husband usually assumes that his wife has been unfaithful to him whenever there has been an opportunity for criminality....  In some tribes the husband will frequently prostitute his wife to his brother; otherwise more commonly to strangers visiting his tribe than to his own people, and in this way our exploring parties have been troubled with proposals of the sort.”

Apart from the other facts here given, the words I have italicized above would alone show that what makes an Australian in some instances guard his females is not a regard for chastity, or jealousy in our sense of the word, but simply a desire to preserve his movable property—­a slave and concubine who, if young or fat, is very liable to be stolen or, on account of the bad treatment she receives from her old master, to run away with a younger man.[163]

If any further evidence were needed on this head it would be supplied by the authoritative statement of J.D.  Wood[164] that

“In fact, chastity as a virtue is absolutely unknown amongst all the tribes of which there are records.  The buying, taking, or stealing of a wife is not at all influenced by considerations of antecedent purity on the part of the woman.  A man wants a wife and he obtains one somehow.  She is his slave and there the matter ends.”

SURVIVALS OF PROMISCUITY

Since this chapter was written a new book on Australia has appeared which bears out the views here taken so admirably that I must insert a brief reference to its contents.  It is Spencer and Gillen’s The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), and relates to nine tribes over whom Baldwin Spencer had been placed as special magistrate and sub-protector for some years, during which he had excellent opportunities to study their customs.  The authors tell us (62, 63) that