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by its consequences; these mix together with the utmost freedom seldom cohabiting together more than one or two days by which means they have fewer children than they would otherwise have, but those who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smotherd at the moment of their birth. Some of these people have been pointed out to me by name and on being askd have not denyd the fact, who have contracted intimacies and livd together for years and even now continue to do so, in the course of which 2, 3 or more children have been born and destroyd.
They are calld Arreoy and have meetings among themselves where the men amuse themselves with wrestling &c. and the women with dancing the indecent dances before mentiond, in the course of which they give full liberty to their desires but I beleive keep strictly up to the appearances of decency. I never was admitted to see them, one of our gentlemen saw part of one but I beleive very little of their real behavior tho he saw enough to make him give credit to what we had been told.
This custom as indeed it is natural to suppose Owes as we were told its existence cheifly
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 366, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-121.html