Their Ideas Of Female Chastity Are, In This Respect, So Different From Ours, That A Girl May Favour A Number Of Lovers Without Any Detriment To Her Character; But If She Marries, Conjugal Fidelity Is Exacted From Her With The Greatest Rigour.

It may therefore be alleged, that as the New Zealanders place no value on the continence of their unmarried

Women, the arrival of Europeans among them does not injure their moral characters in this respect; but we doubt whether they ever debased themselves so much as to make a trade of their women, before we created new wants by shewing these iron tools, for the possession of which they do not hesitate to commit an action, that, in our eyes, deprives them of the very shadow of sensibility. It is unhappy enough, that the unavoidable consequence of all our voyages of discovery has always been the loss of a number of innocent lives; but this heavy injury done to the little uncivilized communities which Europeans have visited, is trifling when compared to the irretrievable harm entailed upon them by corrupting their morals. If these evils were compensated in some measure by the introduction of some real benefit in these countries, or by the abolition of some other immoral custom among their inhabitants, we might at least comfort ourselves, that what they lost on one hand, they gained on the other; but I fear that hitherto our intercourse has been wholly disadvantageous to the natives of the South Seas; and that those communities have been the least injured, who have always kept aloof from us, and whose jealous disposition did not suffer our sailors to become too familiar among them, as if they had perceived in their countenances that levity of disposition, and that spirit of debauchery, with which they are generally reproached."

A little afterwards, relating a trip over to Long Island, it is said, "In the afternoon, many of our sailors were allowed to go on shore, among the natives, where they traded for curiosities, and purchased the embraces of the ladies, notwithstanding the disgust which their uncleanliness inspired. Their custom of painting their cheeks with ochre and oil, was alone sufficient to deter the more sensible from such intimate connections with them; and if we add to this a certain stench which announced them even at a distance, and the abundance of vermin which not only infested their hair, but also crawled on their clothes, and which they occasionally cracked between their teeth, it is astonishing that persons should be found, who could gratify an animal appetite with such loathsome objects, whom a civilized education and national customs should have taught them to hold in abhorrence." - G.F.

May this sad picture have the same effect, which the fathers of Sparta expected from the exhibition of their drunken slaves! - E.

[4] A few miscellaneous observations respecting New Zealand, collected from Mr G.F.'s work, may be given here with interest to some readers: - The arrival at New Zealand, was most delightful to men who had so long suffered the inclemencies and hardships of a navigation in the southern sea.

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