praemio parvi aut paucorum denariorum meretrices fieri eas libenter
cogunt. Facile potest intelligi, amorem inter nuptos vix posse esse
grandem, quum omnia quae ad foeminas attinent, hominum arbitrio
ordinentur et tanta sexuum societati laxitas, et adolescentes quibus ita
multae ardoris explendi dantur occasiones, haud magnopere uxores, nisi ut
servas desideraturos.

But little real affection consequently exists between husbands and wives,
and young men value a wife principally for her services as a slave; in
fact when asked why they are anxious to obtain wives, their usual reply
is, that they may get wood, water, and food for them, and carry whatever
property they possess. In 1842 the wife of a native in Adelaide, a girl
about eighteen, was confined, and recovered slowly; before she was well
the tribe removed from the locality, and the husband preferred
accompanying them, and left his wife to die, instead of remaining to
attend upon her and administer to her wants. When the natives were gone,
the girl was removed to the mission station, to receive medical
attendance, but eventually died. In the same year an old woman who broke
her thigh was left to die, as the tribe did not like the trouble of
carrying her about. Parents are treated in the same manner when helpless
and infirm. [Note 77 at end of para.] In 1839 I found an aged man
left to die, without fire or food, upon a high bare hill beyond the
Broughton. In 1843 I found two old women, who had been abandoned in
the same way, at the Murray, and although they were taken every care
of when discovered, they both died in about a week afterwards. No age
is prescribed for matrimony, but young men under twenty-five years
of age do not often obtain wives, there are exceptions, however,
to this: I have seen occasionally young men of seventeen or eighteen
possessing them. When wives are from thirty-five to forty years of age,
they are frequently cast off by the husbands, or are given to the