terious fluid or agency
which contains the element of destruction, with a larger portion of that
sagacity which comprehends dissimulation. Thus they cannot only defend
themselves against all aggressions from the males, but could, at any
moment when he least expected his danger, terminate the existence of an
offending spouse. To the credit of the Gy-ei no instance of their abuse
of this awful superiority in the art of destruction is on record for
several ages. The last that occurred in the community I speak of appears
(according to their chronology) to have been about two thousand years
ago. A Gy, then, in a fit of jealousy, slew her husband; and this
abominable act inspired such terror among the males that they emigrated
in a body and left all the Gy-ei to themselves. The history runs that
the widowed Gy-ei, thus reduced to despair, fell upon the murderess when
in her sleep (and therefore unarmed), and killed her, and then entered
into a solemn obligation amongst themselves to abrogate forever the
exercise of their extreme conjugal powers, and to inculcate the
same obligation for ever and ever on their female children. By this
conciliatory process, a deputation despatched to the fugitive consorts
succeeded in persuading many to return, but those who did return were
mostly the elder ones. The younger, either from too craven a doubt of
their consorts, or too high an estimate of their own merits, rejected
all overtures, and, remaining in other communities, were caught up there
by other mates, with whom perhaps they were no better off. But the loss
of so large a portion of the male youth operated as a salutary warning
on the Gy-ei, and confirmed them in the pious resolution to which they
pledged themselves. Indeed it is now popularly considered that, by long
hereditary disuse, the Gy-ei have lost both the aggressive and defensive
superiority over the Ana which they once possessed, just as in the
inferior animals above the earth many peculiarities in their original
formation, intended by nature for their protection, gradually fade or
become inoperative when not needed under altered circumstances. I should
be sorry, however, for any An who induced a Gy to make the experiment
whether he or she were the stronger.

From the incident I have narrated, the Ana date certain alterations in
the marriage customs, tending, perhaps, somewhat to the advantage of the
male. They now bind themselves in wedlock only for three years; at the
en