This widely extended custom of prolonged suckling among non-pastoral peoples seems to show that Nature intended the human mother to suckle her offspring until it had developed the teeth necessary for masticating solid food. Civilization, ever driving Nature at high pressure, has found artificial food for infants, leaving the mother free to bear the stress of a second maternity. To meet this increased strain the civilized mother is nourished and tended with a care that is never bestowed upon her savage sister. Barbarism followed the law of Nature and supported it by a customary law of mutual abstinence, but the customary law of the Fijians has been mutilated and has left them between two stools, not yet adopting the conveniences of civilization and obliged, nevertheless, to do the high pressure work of the civilized state without help. The reproductive powers of the Fijian woman of to-day are forced, though her body is no better prepared by a generous course of food to meet the strain than when she was allowed to follow the less exacting course of Nature for which only her body is fitted. And to make matters worse, the Fijians, recognizing the evils of too frequent conceptions, drink nostrums to prevent them, probably injuring thereby the child at the breast. [Pageheader: THE MISSIONARIES' MISTAKE] If the missionaries, as is said, are responsible for breaking down these customs of abstinence, and still regard it as "absurd and superstitious," it is a pity that they did not recognize another important difference between European and Fijian society--the irregular and insufficient nourishment for the women and the lack of artificial food for infants--and devote their efforts to reforming this before they discouraged a custom so admirably adapted to meet the evils of a lack of cereals and milk-yielding animals. It is too late now to go back. The Fijian husband will never again consent to enforced separation from his wife. Rapid conceptions and a high birth-rate must be reckoned with, and the only feasible remedy is to improve the diet of the nursing mother, and induce the people generally to keep milk-yielding animals for their children. Cattle thrive in Fiji, but the efforts of the Government to convert the Fijian agriculturist to pastoral pursuits cannot be said to have been successful. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 69: _Some Pictures from Japan_, by Sir Edwin Arnold.] [Footnote 70: _Beechey's Voyage_, p. 128.] [Footnote 71: _Notes on the Customs of Mota (Banks Islands)_, by the Rev. R. H. Codrington, M.A.] [Footnote 72: _British Central Africa_, by Sir H. H. Johnston.] [Footnote 73: _Ibid._, p. 415.] CHAPTER X THE MARRIAGE SYSTEM[74]