Cook's Descriptions of Places, King Georges Island, page 22

Page 22

Cook's Descriptions of Places

King Georges Island

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King Georges Island (continued)

free liberty in love without being troubled or disturbed by its concequences These mix and cohabit together with the utmost freedom and the Children who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smother'd at the moment of their birth; many of these people contract intimacies and live together as Man and wife for years in the Course of which the Children that are born are destroy'd. They are so far from concealing it that they rather look upon it as a branch of freedom upon which they value themselves. They are call'd Arreoy's and have meetings ~~of their~~ among themselves where the men amuse themselves with wristling &C^a and the women in dancing the indecent dance before mentioned, in the Course of which they give full liberty to their desires but I believe keep up to the appearence of decency. I never saw one of these meetings. D^r Munkhouse saw part of one enough to make him give credit to what we had been told -

Both sexes express the most indecent ideas in conversation without the least emotion and they delight in such conversation behond any other. Chastity indeed is but little Valued especialy among the middle people if a wife is found guilty of a breach of it her only punishment is a beating from her husband - the men will very readily offer the young women to strangers even their own daughters and think it very strange if you refuse them but this is done meerly for the lucre of gain —

The Houses or dwellings of these people are admirably

Voyaging Accounts

© Transcribed from National Library of Australia Manuscript 1 page 85, 2004
Published by South Seas
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/cook_remarks-022