In other customs respecting the females, there seems to be no such obscurity; especially as to their connections with the men. If a young man and woman, from mutual choice, cohabit, the man gives the father of the girl such things as are necessary in common life; as hogs, cloth, or canoes, in proportion to the time they are together; and if he thinks that he has not been sufficiently paid for his daughter, he makes no scruple of forcing her to leave her friend, and to cohabit with another person, who may be more liberal. The man, on his part, is always at liberty to make a new choice; but, should his consort become pregnant, he may kill the child; and, after that, either continue his connection with the mother, or leave her. But if he should adopt the child, and suffer it to live, the parties are then considered as in the married state, and they commonly live together ever after. However, it is thought no crime in the man to join a more youthful partner to his first wife, and to live with both. The custom of changing their connections is, however, much more general than this last; and it is a thing so common, that they speak of it with great indifference. The _Erreoes_ are only those of the better sort, who, from their fickleness, and their possessing the means of purchasing a succession of fresh connections, are constantly roaming about; and, from having no particular attachment, seldom adopt the more settled method mentioned above. And so agreeable is this licentious plan of life to their disposition, that the most beautiful of both sexes thus commonly spend their youthful days, habituated to the practice of enormities which would disgrace the most savage tribes; but are peculiarly shocking amongst a people whose general character, in other respects, has evident traces of the prevalence of humane and tender feelings.[18] When an _Erreoe_ woman is delivered of a child, a piece of cloth, dipped in water, is applied to the mouth and nose, which suffocates it. As in such a life, their women must contribute a very large share of its happiness, it is rather surprising, besides the humiliating restraints they are laid under with regard to food, to find them often treated with a degree of harshness, or rather brutality, which one would scarcely suppose a man would bestow on an object for whom he had the least affection. Nothing, however, is more common, than to see the men beat them without mercy; and, unless this treatment is the effect of jealousy, which both sexes at least pretend to be sometimes infected with, it will be difficult to admit this as the motive, as I have seen several instances where the women have preferred personal beauty to interest; though I must own, that, even in these cases, they seem scarcely susceptible of those delicate sentiments that are the result of mutual affection; and, I believe, that there is less Platonic love in Otaheite than in any other country.