WOMEN OF OTAHEITE.

In Otaheite, an island in the Southern Ocean, we are presented with women of a singular character. As far as we can recollect, we think it is a pretty [p142] general rule, that whatever the sex are accustomed to be constantly clothed, they are ashamed to appear naked: those of Otaheite seem however to be an exception to this rule; to show themselves in public, with or without clothing, appears to be to them a matter of equal indifference, and the exposition of any part of their bodies, is not attended with the least backwardness or reluctance; circumstances from which we may reasonably infer, that among them, clothes were not originally invented to cover shame, but either as ornaments, or as a defence against the cold. But a still more striking singularity in the character of these women, and which distinguishes them not only from the females of all other nations, but likewise from those of almost all other animals, is, their performing in public those rites, which in every other part of the globe, and among almost all animals, are performed in privacy and retirement: whether this is the effect of innocence, or of a dissoluteness of manners to which no other people have yet arrived, remains still to be discovered; that they are dissolute, even beyond any thing we have hitherto recorded, is but too certain. As polygamy is not allowed among them, to satisfy the lust of variety, they have a society called Arreoy, in which every woman is common to every man; and when any of these women happens to have a child, it is smothered in the moment of its birth, that it may not interrupt the pleasures of its infamous mother; but in this juncture, should nature relent at so horrid a deed, even then the mother is not allowed to save her child, unless she can find a man who will patronise it as a father; in which case, the man is considered as having appropriated the woman to himself, and she is accordingly extruded from this hopeful society. These few anecdotes sufficiently characterise the women of this island.