In Babylonia, China, and Mexico the caste at the bottom of the social scale lived upon floating islands of reeds or rafts, covered with earth, on the lakes and rivers. In Peru and Babylonia marriages were made but once a year, at a public festival. Among the Romans, the Chinese, the Abyssinians, and the Indians of Canada the singular custom prevails of lifting the bride over the door-step of her husband's home. (Sir John Lubbock, "Smith. Rep.," 1869, p. 352.) "The bride-cake which so invariably accompanies a wedding among ourselves, and which must always be cut by the bride, may be traced back to the old Roman form of marriage by 'conferreatio,' or eating together. So, also, among the Iroquois the bride and bridegroom used to partake together of a cake of sagamite, which the bride always offered to her husband." (Ibid.) Among many American tribes, notably in Brazil, the husband captured the wife by main force, as the men of Benjamin carried off the daughters of Shiloh at the feast, and as the Romans captured the Sabine women. "Within a few generations the same old habit was kept up in Wales, where the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off the bride; and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride's people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt, except now and then by accident--as happened when one Lord Hoath lost an eye, which mischance put an end to this curious relic of antiquity." (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 409.) Marriage in Mexico was performed by the priest. He exhorted them to maintain peace and harmony, and tied the end of the man's mantle to the dress of the woman; he perfumed them, and placed on each a shawl on which was painted a skeleton, "as a symbol that only death could now separate them from one another." (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 379.)