American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and Polynesians. The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand how anyone could marry such fat abominations. Concerning the South American tribes, Humboldt says (_Trav.,_ I., 301): "In several languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead." FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief criterion of a woman's charms. The hideous deformity known as steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the buttocks, occurs among South African Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women. Darwin says that Sir Andrew Smith "once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to Burton, the Somal men, 'are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects farthest _a tergo_. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form.'"[116] The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist, according to Lander, in "the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the object." Among the Karagué, women were exempted from hard labor because the men were anxious to have them as fat as possible. To please the men, they ate enormous quantities of bananas and drank milk by the gallon. Three of Rumanika's wives were so fat that they could not go through an ordinary door, and when they walked they needed two men each to support them. Speke measured one of the much-admired African wonders of obesity, who was unable to stand except on all fours. Result: around the arms, 1 foot 11 inches; chest, 4 feet 4 inches; thigh, 2 feet 7 inches; calf, 1 foot 8 inches; height, 5 feet 8 inches. "Meanwhile, the daughter, a lass of sixteen, sat stark-naked before us, sucking at a milk-pot, on which her father kept her at work by holding a rod in his hand; for as fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her features were lovely, but her body was round as a ball." Speke also tells (370) of a girl who, a mere child when the king died, was such a favorite of his, that he left her twenty cows, in order that she might fatten upon milk after her native fashion. ORIENTAL IDEALS Mungo Park declared that the Moorish women