“Talia erant nostra officia matutina; Indi vero nostri vesperas toto coelo diversas iudicarunt esse offerendas. Vir quidam iuvenis, procerus, fere sex pedes, ritus Veneris cum pupula vix undenorum vel duodenorum annorum, pluribus nostrum magnoque popularium numero coram intuentibus, perfecit, quin actum dedecere, vel bonis adversari moribus senserit; verum, ut concludere licuit, moribus illius regionis omnino congruenter. Erant autem in turba inspectante non paucae mulieres ordinum superiorum, in specie autem Oberea (mulier principalis illius Insulae, quae primum regina esse reputabatur), quae ad ceremonias ministrasse iure dici potest; nam mulieres hae puellam monendo instituebant quemadmodum vidl. sibi sua parte muneris obeundum esset.”[665] Quum apud Samoanos nuptiae cuiusdam optimatum in diebus primaevis celebrabantur, partes agnatique sponsae in _maroe_, seu foro publico congregabantur, ubi sponsus, cunctis intuentibus, primam virginitatis sponsae obryssam instituit. Si documentum virginitatis ab eo exhiberi potuerat, coetus omnis exsurrexit complosisque manibus sponsae gratulabundus acclamavit; at, si quo casu proba haec defuerit, eam probris scommatibusque lacessiverant. Apud plebem humilem ritus his in aedibus privatis, nec tanta pompa celebrabatur.[666] ----- Footnote 665: _Voyages of Capt. James Cook_, I, 56. Footnote 666: Turner’s _Samoa a Hundred Years Ago_, pp. 93–95. ----- BIBLE TESTIMONY. A distinct reference to the proofs of chastity, in the blood-stamped cloth, is found in the Bible record of the ancient law of Israel. “If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and lay shameful things to her charge, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came nigh to her, I found not in her the tokens of virginity: then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: and the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; and, lo, he hath laid shameful things to her charge, saying, I found not in thy daughter the tokens of virginity; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the garment [or cloth, Hebrew _simlah_] before the elders of the city. “And the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him; and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the damsel: then they shall bring out the damsel to the doors of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house.”[667] -----