While life is thus healthy and prolonged, there are no restraints upon the formation of family connexions, by the scarcity of subsistence or the labour of supporting children. Both sexes arrive at maturity very early, and the customs of the country, as well as the nature of the climate, impel them to marry young; the males at sixteen, and the females at thirteen or fourteen years of age: though frequently the women form connexions at nine or ten, and, as Montesquieu expresses it, "infancy and marriage go together." The conveniences which the married couple require are few and easily procured. The impulse of nature is seldom checked by the experience of present deficiencies, or the fear of future poverty. Subsistence is procured without difficulty, and comforts are not wanting. Children, who are for a very short period a burden to their parents, become early the means of assistance and the source of wealth. To the peasant who labours his field with his own hand, and who has more land than he can bring into cultivation, they grow up into a species of valuable property, a real treasure; while, during their infancy and the season of helplessness, they take little from the fruits of his industry but bare subsistence. Their education costs him little or nothing; scarcely any clothing is required, his hut needs very little enlargement, and no beds are used. Many of them die in infancy from the small-pox and other distempers, but never from scanty food or criminal neglect of parents. The women of all classes suckle their children, till we ascend to the wives of the regents and of the sovereign, who employ nurses.