was then dancing. "If she was plated with gold," replied he, "I would not
take her for my concubine, much less for my wife." A brother of the girl
happened to be within hearing, and called him to account for the
reflection thrown on his sister. Krises were drawn but the bystanders
prevented mischief. The brother appeared the next day to take the law of
the defamer, but the gentleman, being of the risau description, had
absconded, and was not to be found.

NUMBER OF WIVES.

The customs of the Sumatrans permit their having as many wives by jujur
as they can compass the purchase of or afford to maintain; but it is
extremely rare that an instance occurs of their having more than one, and
that only among a few of the chiefs. This continence they in some measure
owe to their poverty. The dictates of frugality are more powerful with
them than the irregular calls of appetite, and make them decline an
indulgence that their law does not restrain them from. In talking of
polygamy they allow it to be the privilege of the rich, but regard it as
a refinement which the poor Rejangs cannot pretend to. Some young risaus
have been known to take wives in different places, but the father of the
first, as soon as he hears of the second marriage, procures a divorce. A
man married by semando cannot take a second wife without repudiating the
first for this obvious reason that two or more persons could not be
equally entitled to the half of his effects.

QUESTION OF POLYGAMY.

Montesquieu infers that the law which permits polygamy is physically
conformable to the climate of Asia. The season of female beauty precedes
that of their reason, and from its prematurity soon decays. The empire of
their charms is short. It is therefore natural, the president observes,
that a man should leave one wife to take another: that he should seek a
renovation of those charms which had withered in his possession. But are
these the real circumstances of polygamy? Surely not. It implies the
contemporary enjoyment of women in the same predicament; and I should
consider it as a vice that has its source in the influence of a warm
atmosphere upon the passions of men, which, like the cravings of other
disordered appetites, make them miscalculate their wants. It is probably
the same influence, on less rigid nerves, that renders their thirst of
revenge so much more violent than among northern nations; but we are not
therefore to pronounce murder to be physically confo