The husband receives no other dowry with his wife than the presents she obtains before the ceremony. As soon as the young couple are married, they are shut up in an apartment by themselves for three days; a servant brings them necessary food, while their friends are entertained with great merriment by the bride’s father. At the end of this time they are liberated, receive congratulations, and are conducted to their future home. The women of Celebes are distinguished for virtue and modesty. They take an active part in business, and are frequently raised to the throne, though the government is elective. At public festivals they appear freely among men, and those in authority discuss affairs of state in their councils. In token of equality, the husband and wife always eat from the same dish; he from the right side, and she from the left. The wife of the chief of Lipukaski was considered one of the first politicians in Celebes. One day she rode out among the warriors of her tribe, and upbraiding them with tardiness in giving battle, she demanded a spear, that she might herself give them an example. Stimulated by her reproof, they went forth and gained the victory. This woman was said to have a countenance expressive of great intelligence and firmness. In many parts of the Eastern Archipelago women have been intrusted with sovereign power; and it is singular that this occurs most frequently where the government is most turbulent. The passion for gaming, so common in the other islands, prevails in Celebes. Wives, children, and personal freedom are often staked, and quarrels arise which occasion deadly hostility between families. The fine demanded by law is twenty dollars for the murder of a man, and thirty for a woman. The women of Celebes, and of the other Molucca islands, wear hats of prodigious size, six or seven feet in diameter. Infants are plentifully rubbed with oil, and boys are never nursed longer than a year, from the idea that it would injure their understandings. * * * * * In Amboyna, as in almost every part of the East, a man purchases a bride by a certain sum of money given to the parents. They have an unbounded admiration for very young girls, and a great abhorrence of old women. The girls are not often trusted away from their mothers; but courtship is carried on by means of nosegays, or plates of fruit, mutually exchanged, and arranged in such a manner as to signify the various degrees of love or disapprobation. In some of the neighboring islands, when a young man is too bashful to speak his love, he seizes the first opportunity he can find of sitting near the object of his affection, and tying his garment to hers. If she allows him to finish the knot, and neither cuts nor loosens it, she thereby gives her consent to the marriage. If she merely loosens it, he is at liberty to try his luck again, at a more propitious moment; but if she cuts it, there is an end of hope.