these people have ascended, wholly unknown to every other nation whose
manners have been recorded from the beginning of the world to the
present hour, and which no imagination could possibly conceive.

A very considerable number of the principal people of Otaheite, of both
sexes, have formed themselves into a society, in which every woman is
common to every man; thus securing a perpetual variety as often as their
inclination prompts them to seek it, which is so frequent, that the same
man and woman seldom cohabit together more than two or three days.

These societies are distinguished by the name of _Arreoy_; and the
members have meetings, at which no other is present, where the men amuse
themselves by wrestling, and the women, notwithstanding their occasional
connection with different men, dance the Timorodee in all its latitude,
as an incitement to desires, which, it is said, are frequently gratified
upon the spot. This, however, is comparatively nothing. If any of the
women happen to be with child, which in this manner of life happens less
frequently than if they were to cohabit only with one man, the poor
infant is smothered the moment it is born, that it may be no incumbrance
to the father, nor interrupt the mother in the pleasures of her
diabolical prostitution. It sometimes indeed happens, that the passion
which prompts a woman to enter into this society, is surmounted when she
becomes a mother, by that instinctive affection which Nature has given
to all creatures for the preservation of their offspring; but even in
this case, she is not permitted to spare the life of her infant, except
she can find a man who will patronise it as his child: If this can be
done, the murder is prevented; but both the man and woman, being deemed
by this act to have appropriated each other, are ejected from the
community, and forfeit all claim to the privileges and pleasures of the
Arreoy for the future; the woman from that time being distinguished by