girls in two coops; the girls were not more than ten years old,
still they were lying in a doubled-up position, as their little houses
would not admit of them lying in any other way. These two coops were
inside a large house; but the chief, in consideration of a present of a
couple of tomahawks, ordered the ends to be torn out of the house to
admit the light, so that we might photograph the _buck_. The occupant
was allowed to put her face through an opening to be photographed, in
consideration of another present."[92] As a consequence of their long
enforced idleness in the shade the girls grow fat and their dusky
complexion bleaches to a more pallid hue. Both their corpulence and
their pallor are regarded as beauties.[93]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in New Guinea, Borneo, Ceram and Yap.]

In Kabadi, a district of British New Guinea, "daughters of chiefs, when
they are about twelve or thirteen years of age, are kept indoors for two
or three years, never being allowed, under any pretence, to descend from
the house, and the house is so shaded that the sun cannot shine on
them."[94] Among the Yabim and Bukaua, two neighbouring and kindred
tribes on the coast of German New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded
for some five or six weeks in an inner part of the house; but she may
not sit on the floor, lest her uncleanness should cleave to it, so a log
of wood is placed for her to squat on. Moreover, she may not touch the
ground with her feet; hence if she is obliged to quit the house for a
short time, she is muffled up in mats and walks on two halves of a
coconut shell, which are fastened like sandals to her feet by creeping
plants. During her seclusion she is in charge of her aunts or other
female relatives. At the end of the time she bathes, her person is
loaded with ornaments, her face is grotesquely painted with red stripes
on a white ground, and thus adorned she is brought forth in public to be
admired by everybody. She is now marriageable.[95] Among the Ot Danoms
of Borneo girls at the age of eight or ten years are shut up in a little
room or cell of the house, and cut off from all intercourse with the
world for a long time. The cell, like the rest of the house, is raised
on piles above the ground, and is lit by a single small window opening
on a lonely place, so that the girl is in almost total darkness. She may
not leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the most
necessary purposes. None of her famil