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instance fond of society and very much so of their women. I have often askd the reason of them but they have as often evaded the question or given me no other answer but that they did it because it was right, and expressd much disgust when I told them that in England men and women eat together and the same victuals; they however constantly affirm that it does not proceed from any superstitious motive, Eatua they say has nothing to do with it. But whatever the motive may be it certainly affects their outward manners more than their principles: in the tents for instance we never saw an instance of the women partaking of our victuals at our table, but we have several [times] seen them go 5 or 6 together into the servants apartment and there eat very heartily of whatever they could find, nor were they at all disturbd if we came in while they were doing [it] tho we had before usd all the intreatys we were masters of to invite them to partake with us. When a woman was alone she would often eat even in our company, but always took care to extort a strong promise that we should not let her countrey people
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 360, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-115.html