his:

"The kangaroo ran very fast
But I ran faster;
The kangaroo was fat;
I ate him."

[172] _Roy. Geogr. Soc. of Australasia_, Vol. V., 29.

[173] The reason why Westermarck is so eager to prove liberty of
choice on the part of Australian women is because he has set himself
the hopeless task of proving that the lower we go the more liberty
woman has, and that "under more primitive conditions she was even more
free in that respect than she is now amongst most of the lower races."
"As man in the earliest times," he asserts (222), "had no reason ...
to retain his full-grown daughter, she might go away and marry at her
pleasure." Quite the contrary; an Australian, than whom we know no
more "primitive" man, had every reason for not allowing her to go away
and marry whom she pleased. He looked on his daughter, as we have
seen, chiefly as a desirable piece of property to exchange for some
other man's daughter or sister.

[174] As distinguished from the more common sham elopement, at which
the parents are consulted as usual. In the Kunandaburi tribe, for
instance, as Howitt himself tells us (_Jour. Anthr. Inst_., XX.,
60-61) the suitor asks permission of the girl's parents to take her
away. "She resists all she can, biting and screaming, while the other
women look on laughing." The whole thing is obviously a custom ordered
by the parents, and tells us nothing regarding the presence or absence
of choice. See the remarks on sham capture in my chapter on Coyness
(125).

[175] The reader will note that here are some additional objects
usually supposed to be "ornamental," but which, as in all the cases
examined in the chapter on Personal Beauty, are seen on close
examination to serve other than esthetic purposes. These _are_
intended to _charm_ the women, not, however, as things of beauty, but
by their magic qualities and by attracting their attention.

[176] With his usual conscientious regard for facts Westermarck
declares (70) that in a savage condition of life "every full-grown man
marries as soon as possible."

[177] We are occasionally warned not to underrate the intelligence of
the aboriginal Australian. As a matter of fact, there is more danger
of its being overrated. Thus it was long believed that what was known
as the "terrible rite" (_finditur usque ad urethram membrum
virile_)--see Curr I., 52, 72--was practised as a check to population;
but surgeon-general Roth (179) has exploded this ide