Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/93

( 68 ) is no resting time between the periods of perfection and decline; like the delicate fruits of the soil, the genial warmth of the sun forces them to a premature ripeness, and after a momentary bloom sinks them towards decay: at fourteen they become mothers, at sixteen the blossoms of their beauty are full blown, and at twenty they are withered like the faded rose in autumn. Thus the lives of three of these daughters of the sun are scarce equal to that of one European: among the former the period of their bodily perfections far precedes that of their mental ones, in the latter they accompany each other hand in hand. These principles, doubtless, influenced the wise law-givers of the East in their permission of polygamy; for, in the torrid zone, should a man be circumscribed to one wife, he must pass nearly