But even supposing a woman to give no encouragement to her admirers, many plots are always laid to carry her off, and in the encounters which result from these she is almost certain to receive some violent injury, for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and in the event of her refusing throws a spear at her.  The early life of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females amongst whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.

These various circumstances render miscarriages more frequent amongst these uncivilized tribes than amongst European nations, and the first years and bloom of a female generally elapse before she has any children; but then a fresh cause exists to prevent their having very large families, which is that, from the nature of the food used by the natives, it is necessary that a child should have good strong teeth before it can be even partially weaned.  The native women therefore suckle their children until they are past the age of two or three years, and it is by no means uncommon to see a fine healthy child leave off playing and run up to its mother to take the breast.

The native women suffer much less pain during the period of labour than Europeans; directly the child is born, it is wrapped in opossum skins, and strings made of the fur of this animal are tied like bracelets round the infant’s wrists and ankles, with the intention of rendering it, by some supernatural means, a stronger and a finer child.  They are always much prouder of a male than of a female child.

AVERAGE NUMBERS AND PROPORTION OF BIRTHS.

Forty-one females, of whose families I have obtained (from themselves and others) lists upon the accuracy of which I can rely, had 188 children, or about 4.6 children each.  The greatest number born by any one female was 7, and only three had had so large a family as this; but with the exception of one woman they had all born more than one child.  All those who were included in this list were past the age of child-bearing at the time it was drawn up.

To ascertain the proportion of male to female children I drew up another list of 222 births, and out of these there were 93 females and 129 males, or about 1 female to every 1.3 males.

I have known four instances of native women having twins, but I have never heard of a greater number of children at one birth.  Should a child be born with any natural deformity it is frequently killed by its parents soon afterwards.  In the only instances of this kind which have come within my own knowledge the child has been drowned.