y may see her all the time she is
shut up, but a single slave woman is appointed to wait on her. During
her lonely confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies
herself in weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is
stunted by the long want of exercise, and when, on attaining womanhood,
she is brought out, her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now
shewn the sun, the earth, the water, the trees, and the flowers, as if
she were newly born. Then a great feast is made, a slave is killed, and
the girl is smeared with his blood.[96] In Ceram girls at puberty were
formerly shut up by themselves in a hut which was kept dark.[97] In Yap,
one of the Caroline Islands, should a girl be overtaken by her first
menstruation on the public road, she may not sit down on the earth, but
must beg for a coco-nut shell to put under her. She is shut up for
several days in a small hut at a distance from her parents' house, and
afterwards she is bound to sleep for a hundred days in one of the
special houses which are provided for the use of menstruous women.[98]

Sec. 3. _Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in the Torres Straits Islands and
Northern Australia_

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in Mabuiag, Torres Straits.]

In the island of Mabuiag, Torres Straits, when the signs of puberty
appear on a girl, a circle of bushes is made in a dark corner of the
house. Here, decked with shoulder-belts, armlets, leglets just below the
knees, and anklets, wearing a chaplet on her head, and shell ornaments
in her ears, on her chest, and on her back, she squats in the midst of
the bushes, which are piled so high round about her that only her head
is visible. In this state of seclusion she must remain for three months.
All this time the sun may not shine upon her, but at night she is
allowed to slip out of the hut, and the bushes that hedge her in are
then changed. She may not feed herself or handle food, but is fed by one
or two old women, her maternal aunts, who are especially appointed to
look after her. One of these women cooks food for her at a special fire
in the forest. The girl is forbidden to eat turtle or turtle eggs during
the season when the turtles are breeding; but no vegetable food is
refused her. No man, not even her own father, may come into the house
while her seclusion lasts; for if her father saw her at this time he
would certainly have bad luck in his fishing, and would probably smash
his canoe the v