Passing to the Australian continent: among the natives of New South Wales, the parties are in most cases betrothed very early in life, the young man claiming his wife later on, as soon as he arrives at the proper age.[805] According to Mr. Curr, “girls become wives at from eight to fourteen years of age.”[806] At Port Moresby, New Guinea, “few men over twenty years of age remain single;” and the Maoris in New Zealand are stated to marry very young.[807] Moreover, celibacy is comparatively rare not only among savage and barbarous, but among several civilized races. Among the Azteks, no young man lived single till his twenty-second year, unless he intended to become a priest, and for girls the customary marrying-age was from eleven to eighteen. In Tlascala, according to Clavigero, the unmarried state was, indeed, so despised that a full-grown man who would not marry had his hair cut off for shame.[808] Again, among the ancient Peruvians, every year, or every two years, each governor in his district had to arrange for the marriage of all the young men at the age of twenty-four and upwards, and all the girls from eighteen to twenty.[809] In Japan, as I am told by a Japanese friend, old maids and old bachelors are almost entirely unknown, and the same is the case in China.[810] “Almost all Chinese,” says Dr. Gray, “robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry so soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable.” Hence a young man of marriageable age, whom consumption or any other lingering disease had marked for its own, would be called upon by his parents or guardians to marry at once.[811] Nay, so indispensable is marriage considered among this people, that even the dead are married. Thus the spirits of all males who die in infancy, or in boyhood, are in due time married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age.[812] Marco Polo states the prevalence of the same practice among the Tartars.[813] In Corea, says the Rev. John Ross, “the male human being who is unmarried is never called a ‘man,’ whatever his age, but goes by the name of ‘yatow;’ a name given by the Chinese to unmarriageable young girls: and the ‘man’ of thirteen or fourteen has a perfect right to strike, abuse, order about the ‘yatow’ of thirty, who dares not as much as open his lips to complain.”[814]