CONDITION OF THE WOMEN.

The life of a married woman among the Kowrarega and Gudang blacks is a
hard one. She has to procure nearly all the food for herself and husband,
except during the turtling season, and on other occasions when the men
are astir. If she fails to return with a sufficiency of food, she is
probably severely beaten--indeed the most savage acts of cruelty are
often inflicted upon the women for the most trivial offence.

THEIR TREATMENT BY THE MEN.

Considering the degraded position assigned by the Australian savages to
their women, it is not surprising that the Prince of Wales Islanders
should, by imitating their neighbours in this respect, afford a strong
contrast to the inhabitants of Darnley and other islands of the
North-East part of Torres Strait, who always appeared to me to treat
their females with much consideration and kindness. Several instances of
this kind of barbarity came under my own notice. Piaquai
(before-mentioned) when spoken to about his wife whom he had killed a
fortnight before in a fit of passion, seemed much amused at the idea of
having got rid of her unborn child at the same time. One morning at Cape
York, Paida did not keep his appointment with me as usual; on making
inquiry, I found that he had been squabbling with one of his wives a few
minutes before, about some trifle, and had speared her through the hip
and groin. On expressing my disapproval of what he had done, adding that
white men never acted in that manner, he turned it off by jocularly
observing that although _I_ had only one wife, HE had two, and could
easily spare one of them. As a further proof of the low condition of the
women, I may state that it is upon them that the only restrictions in