In New Guinea, too, chastity is strictly maintained.[325] Mr. G. A. Robinson and the Catechist Clark, who lived for years with the aborigines, both declare their belief in the virtue of the young women;[326] and Dr. Finsch assures us that the natives of Dory are, in that respect, superior to many civilized nations in Europe.[327] The French naturalists and some English writers spoke highly of the morality of the young people among the Tasmanians.[328] The women of Uea, Loyalty Islands, are described by Erskine as “strictly chaste before marriage, and faithful wives afterwards.”[329] In Fiji, great continence prevailed among the young folk, the lads being forbidden to approach women till eighteen or twenty years old.[330] Speaking of the aborigines of Melanesia, Dr. Codrington remarks, “It is certain that in these islands generally there was by no means that insensibility in regard to female virtue with which the natives are so commonly charged.”[331] In Samoa, the girls were allowed to cohabit with foreigners, but not with their countrymen,[332] and the chastity of the chiefs’ daughters was the pride of the tribe. But Mr. Turner remarks that, though this virtue was ostensibly cultivated here by both sexes, it was more a name than a reality.[333] With reference to the Australian natives, Mr. Moore Davis says, “Promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is not practised by the Aborigines, and their laws on the subject, particularly those of New South Wales, are very strict. When at camp, all the young unmarried men are stationed by themselves at the extreme ends, while the married men, each with his family, occupy the centre. No conversation is allowed between the single men and the girls or the married women.... Infractions of these and other laws were visited either by punishment by any aggrieved member of the tribe, or by the delinquent having to purge himself of his crime by standing up protected simply by his shield, or a waddy, while five or six warriors threw, from a comparatively short distance, several spears at him.”[334] Concerning several tribes in Western Victoria, Mr. Dawson likewise states that, at the corroborees and great meetings of the tribes, unmarried adults of both sexes are kept strictly apart from those of another tribe. “Illegitimacy is rare,” he says, “and is looked upon with such abhorrence that the mother is always severely beaten by her relatives, and sometimes put to death and burned. Her child is occasionally killed and burned with her. The father of the child is also punished with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed.”[335]