taken to account for the fact that he is so often found guilty of crimes
of violence against females of his own colour, and sometimes even
against European women.

It must be borne in mind that before the white man came the Natives,
like the peasants in many European countries not long ago, conducted
their courtship and love-making with a show of violence which seemed to
them right and proper. The idea, indeed, that any self-respecting Native
girl could yield herself to a lover without, at least, a semblance of
physical resistance, leading to her more or less forcible capture by the
man, would have seemed, and still seems, distinctly improper to the
majority of Native women in their raw state. But since the European code
was set up Native women have not been slow in making use of its
protection, and, as I have seen, have not infrequently abused that
protection by alleging rape or assault where their own action in
simulating flight and resistance served, as they well knew it would, to
stimulate passion and pursuit.

In considering crimes of violence against white women it must also be
remembered that the Native "house-boy" who works in constant and close
physical contact with his European mistress and her daughters is exposed
to sexual excitation which very few European youths are called upon to
withstand. But crimes of this kind are indeed common enough among the
lower orders in Europe and America, and are particularly frequent among
men who have to live for a long time in unnatural abstinence from
natural intercourse with the opposite sex, and who then find themselves
in new surroundings giving opportunities for the gratification of their
natural desires, but without having at the same time the restraining
influences of their home life to help them to overcome the temptations
to which they are exposed. The seaports of Europe and America, and the