All the Oceanic peoples were immoral, and their numbers were slowly decreasing in the Pacific islands as the result of superstition, vice, and selfishness. In order that there should be no scarcity of food in the smaller islands families were often limited to one or two children, many infants being killed at birth. They were particularly averse from daughters, so that in not a few tribes and communities the women were much fewer than the men, perhaps only one woman to four men; thus not a few of the men (priests, generally) were unmarried. Women were very unfairly treated, as is frequently the case among barbarous peoples. They were often forbidden to eat the more nourishing forms of food, in case there should not be enough for the men. In Hawaii, for example, they were put to death if caught eating bananas, coconuts, or the flesh of pigs or turtles. Their husbands (in Tahiti and Samoa) sometimes made them wean their children and bring up instead young pigs or puppies. (A similar practice is referred to in my book on the Pioneers of Canada in regard to the rearing of young bears by Amerindian women.) Wars were constantly being waged between island and island, tribe and tribe--especially in the Melanesian division of Oceania. In the western Pacific, indeed, the lives of the natives, before the establishment of the White Man's rule, was one perpetual acquaintance with terror. At any moment in the offing might appear the war canoes of an enemy, and ensue the sudden invasion of a village, the defeat of its fighting men, the cannibal feast on the bodies of the slain, the carrying off of the young women and children into captivity, there perhaps to be fattened up and killed for more cannibal feasts. Or when bathing and swimming (which nearly all these people delighted in) they might be seized and devoured by sharks; or their islet or island coast was suddenly swamped by an enormous tidal wave, or a mighty earthquake swallowed up the village in an earthcrack or landslide; or red-hot ashes and burning lava from a suddenly active volcano destroyed several communities; or hurricanes devastated their settlements and swamped their fleets of canoes. It is true that they never suffered from cold (except in New Zealand), and seldom from famine; for the sea provided bountifully fish and edible seaweed, there were the sea birds' eggs on the rocks, innumerable oysters, clams, sea slugs[21], crabs, langoustes, and prawns; there were pigeons, parrots, rails, plovers, ducks, on most of the smaller islands, and a bewildering abundance of bird life in New Guinea and the big islands. There was the Bread-fruit tree, there were bananas, yams, the invaluable coconut--giving food and a wholesome drink; and in New Zealand, where tropical products were mostly lacking (though the Maoris introduced sweet potatoes and taro yams), there was the bracken fern, which from root stems yielded a palatable substance like that sago which in west