In this respect, however, there is little difference with any uncultured race. Marriages of affection are unknown to the Fijians, and women remain faithful to their husbands from fear rather than from love. “Like other property,” says Admiral Wilkes, “wives may be sold at pleasure, and the usual price is a musket. Those who purchase them may do with them as they please, even to knocking them on the head.” Thus, among the Fijians, women are, in the true sense of the word, “property,” and marriage is a matter of bargain and sale. This remark is applicable to peoples less savage than the untamed Papuan. Among the pastoral tribes of East Africa, and also the black tribes of Madagascar, women are, if anything, thought less of than cattle. The Kafirs, indeed, value them _in_ cattle, and girls pride themselves on the price they fetch. The condition of the Kafir wife agrees with the estimation in which she is held. Woman occupies much the same position with the true Negro tribes, and even among the North African peoples who have embraced Mohamedanism the woman is subject absolutely to the will of her husband. Wives do not appear to be treated with cruelty, however, and, according to Mr. Winwood Reade, they often, by force of a certain public opinion, exercise a peculiar influence over the men in domestic affairs. Among the Wahuma of East Africa, women, curiously enough, are not regarded exactly as property, and their condition is probably, on the whole, superior to what it is among the Negro or Kafir tribes. Women occupy among the American aborigines a position of, on the whole, greater hardship. They are generally considered as inferior beings, and their lives are spent in the lowest and most laborious drudgery. Throughout both North and South America, with few exceptions, a wife is treated as the property of her husband, who will lend her to a friend with as little compunction as he would a hatchet. Moreover, as amongst most uncultured peoples, she is always liable to instant divorce. This arbitrary treatment, and the hardships which women suffer, have probably much to do with the prevalence of infanticide, especially of female children. The condition of woman among the Eskins appears to be more bearable than with the true American tribes. This is shown by the existence between husband and wife of a certain attachment, which sometimes ripens into real affection; and yet, according to Sir John Ross, the Eskino women are considered merely as property or furniture. It is not far otherwise with the Greenlanders. Crantz declares that, from their twentieth year, the life of their women is a mixture of fear, indigence, and lamentation.