" Her place
was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and
content herself with what was left after her lord had finished his
dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of
death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, under
the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other
choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herself
pretty strictly to "poi" and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seem
to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit in
the garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances.
But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things.
They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.
The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children
alive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries
interfered in this matter too, and stopped it.
To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want
to, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka
takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to
hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him.
A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral.
If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only
necessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be
on hand to the minute--at least his remains will.
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