At the end of those three months they return to their own Island,
and pursue their husbandry and trade for the other nine months.
They find on this Island very fine ambergris. They live on flesh and milk
and rice. They are capital fishermen, and catch a great quantity of fine
large sea-fish, and these they dry, so that all the year they have plenty
of food, and also enough to sell to the traders who go thither. They have
no chief except a bishop, who is subject to the archbishop of another
Island, of which we shall presently speak, called SCOTRA. They have also a
peculiar language.
As for the children which their wives bear to them, if they be girls they
abide with their mothers; but if they be boys the mothers bring them up
till they are fourteen, and then send them to the fathers. Such is the
custom of these two Islands. The wives do nothing but nurse their children
and gather such fruits as their Island produces; for their husbands do
furnish them with all necessaries.[NOTE 1]
NOTE 1. - It is not perhaps of much use to seek a serious identification of
the locality of these Islands, or, as Marsden has done, to rationalise the
fable.
