It might be supposed that at a later stage, when family ties grew stronger, and bride-stealing became a common way of concluding a marriage, the consent of the woman in the event of capture would be quite out of the question. Certainly it must generally have been so when she fell as a booty into the hands of an enemy. But women thus captured may in many cases have been able to escape from the husbands forced on them, and to return to their own, or some friendly neighbouring, tribe. Very frequently, however, bride-stealing seems to have taken place with the approval of the girl, there being no other way in which the match could be concluded if her parents were not willing to agree to it. It is a common mistake, as Mr. Howitt remarks, to confound marriage by capture and marriage by elopement. They are essentially different, the one being effected without, the other with, the woman’s consent.[1373] Thus, among the Australians, many, perhaps most, cases of so-called bride-stealing come under the head of elopements.[1374] Something remains to be said as to the position of sons among uncivilized peoples. When young they are everywhere as much dependent on the parents, or at least on the father, as are their sisters. A boy may be sold, bartered away, or even killed, if his father thinks proper. That the power of life and death, under certain circumstances, rests with the tribe is a matter of little importance in this connection. But as soon as the young man grows up, the father, as a rule, has no longer any authority over him, whereas a woman is always more or less in a state of dependence, marriage implying for her a change of owner only. Among the Australians, says Mr. Curr, “sons become independent when they have gone through the ceremonies by which they attain to the _status_ of manhood.”[1375] The full-grown man is his own master; he is strong enough not to be kept in check by his father, and, being able to shift for himself, he may marry quite independently of the old man’s will. It often happens, indeed, as we have seen, that parents betroth their children when they are young.[1376] But, if such an engagement is not always binding even for the woman, it is of course all the less so for the man. “The choice among the Kalmucks,” Liadov says, “belongs entirely to the parents. Still, there is no constraint upon this point, and, if the son declares that the selection of his parents displease him, there is no further question about the matter.”[1377]