won, at a very tender
age, by some stripling in the household in which they reside. This,
however, is a mere frolic of the affections, and no formal engagement is
contracted. By the time this first love has a little subsided, a second
suitor presents himself, of graver years, and carries both boy and girl
away to his own habitation. This disinterested and generous-hearted fellow
now weds the young couple--marrying damsel and lover at the same time--and
all three thenceforth live together as harmoniously as so many turtles. I
have heard of some men who in civilized countries rashly marry large
families with their wives, but had no idea that there was any place where
people married supplementary husbands with them. Infidelity on either side
is very rare. No man has more than one wife, and no wife of mature years
has less than two husbands,--sometimes she has three, but such instances
are not frequent. The marriage tie, whatever it may be, does not appear to
be indissoluble; for separations occasionally happen. These, however, when
they do take place, produce no unhappiness, and are preceded by no
bickerings: for the simple reason, that an ill-used wife or a hen-pecked
husband is not obliged to file a bill in chancery to obtain a divorce. As
nothing stands in the way of a separation, the matrimonial yoke sits
easily and lightly, and a Typee wife lives on very pleasant and sociable
terms with her husbands. On the whole, wedlock, as known among these
Typees, seems to be of a more distinct and enduring nature than is usually
the case with barbarous people.

But, notwithstanding its existence among them, the scriptural injunction
to increase and multiply seems to be but indifferently attended to. I
never saw any of those large families, in arithmetical or step-ladder
progression, which one often meets with at home. I never knew of more than
two youngsters living together in the same home, and but seldom even that
number. As for the women, it was very plain that the anxieties of the
nursery but seldom disturbed the serenity of their souls; and they were
never seen going about the valley with half a score of little ones tagging
at their apron-strings, or rather at the bread-fruit leaf they usually
wore in the rear.

I have before had occasion to remark that I never saw any of the ordinary
signs of a place of sepulture in the valley, a circumstance which I
attributed, at the time, to my living in a particular part of it, and
be