Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/458

434 people is unknown among the Australian blacks. Fathers dispose of their daughters as they would of sheep or cattle; and if the father be dead, the right falls to the nearest male relative. A man with a daughter of marriageable age arranges to dispose of her, and when the price is agreed upon she is called forward and told that her husband wants her. She may never have seen him before, or seen him only to detest him; if she cries and protests, the father exercises his authority by prodding her with a spear or striking her with a club, and he often winds up by seizing her by the hair and dragging her to the hut of the man who has bought her. If she attempts to run away she is clubbed into obedience, and sometimes her father spears her through the leg or foot, so that she cannot run.



"Among some of the tribes brothers exchange their sisters with other men, so that a marriage is generally a double affair. There is no ceremony, as we understand it, any more than in a horse-trade with us.

"If a man has no sister, he steals a wife from another tribe than his own; he lies in wait in the neighborhood of the other tribe, and when a young woman passes near him he rushes out and knocks her down with a waddy, or club. Then he drags her to his hut and pounds her into submission. Such a proceeding is perfectly proper, though it almost invariably leads to a fight between the two tribes, no matter how friendly they may have been before the occurrence. It is the duty of the woman's tribe to avenge her abduction, and that of the man's to protect the newly wedded couple.