hich 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
the term _Whannownow_, "bearer of children," which is here a term of
reproach; though none can be more honourable in the estimation of wisdom
and humanity, of right reason, and every passion that distinguishes the
man from the brute.

It is not fit that a practice so horrid and so strange should be
imputed to human beings upon slight evidence, but I have such as
abundantly justifies me in the account I have given. The people
themselves are so far from concealing their connection with such a
society as a disgrace, that they boast of it as a privilege; and both
myself and Mr Banks, when particular persons have been pointed out to us
as members of the Arreoy, have questioned them about it, and received
the account that has been here given from their own lips. They have
acknowledged, that they had long been of this accursed society, that
they belonged to it at that time, and that several of their children had
been put to death.[15]

[Footnote 15: It seems, from Mr Turnbull's account, that these accursed
arreoys were rather on the increase,--a circumstance, which, considering
that infanticide formed a part, an essential part inde