The evidence, in short, is unanimously to the effect that the Australian girl has absolutely no liberty of choice.  Yet the astonishing Westermarck, ignoring, more suo, the overwhelming number of facts against him, endeavors in two places (217, 223) to convey the impression to his readers that she does largely enjoy the freedom of choice, placing his sole reliance in two assertions by Howitt and Mathew.[173] Howitt says that among the Kurnai, women are allowed free choice, and Mathew “asserts that, with varying details, marriage by mutual consent will be found among other tribes, also, though it is not completed except by means of a runaway match.”  Now Hewitt’s assertion is contradicted by Curr, who, in addition to his own forty years of experience among the natives had the systematized notes of a large number of correspondents to base his conclusions on.  He says (I., 108) that “in no instance, unless Mr. Howitt’s account of the Kurnai be correct, which I doubt, has the female any voice in the selection of a husband.”  He might have added that Hewitt’s remark is contradicted in his own book, where we are told that among the Kurnai elopement is the rule.  Strange to say, it seems to have occurred neither to Howitt, nor to Westermarck, nor to Mathew that elopement proves the absence of choice, for if there were liberty of choice the couple would not be obliged to run away.  Nor is this all.  The facts prove that marriage by actual elopement[174] is of rare occurrence; that “marriage” based on such elopement is nearly always adulterous (with another man’s wife) and of brief duration—­a mere intrigue, in fact; that the guilty couple are severely punished, if not killed outright; and that everything that is possible is done to prevent or frustrate elopements based on individual preference or liking.  On the first of these points Curr gives us the most comprehensive and reliable information (I., 108): 

“Within the tribe, lovers occasionally abscond to some 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)