If, then, we are to see survivals of primitive customs in the ways of our lowest savages, it seems that this was the very general course of development in early times. Travellers differ so much in competence or in prejudice that one still finds important divergences in different ethnographic writers--the reader who would go more closely into it should compare Letourneau's _Condition de la femme_ (1903) and Westermarck's more optimistic _Position of Woman in Early Civilisation_ (1904)--but the above is a fair summary of the accredited facts. It is, however, necessary to remark that we must not too readily regard the ways of savages as unchanged survivals from the infancy of humanity. Even where their material life remains at the level of the Old Stone Age, their customs may have been greatly modified, under the influence, for instance, of superstitious feelings. With that caution we may glance at the position of woman in existing tribes of savages, especially at the lowest grade, such as the Australian natives, the Fuegians, certain tribes of Central Africa, the Bushmans, and the wild Veddahs of Ceylon. The conflicting statements that are made in regard to the position of woman among the native Australians (of whom only some 20,000 now survive, with greatly altered habits) point to the fact that it differed very considerably in different tribes. It is, however, clear that she was everywhere the great worker of the clan, and nowhere admitted to the tribal councils. Her task it was to make the rude screen of bark that stood for the primitive house, to weave the baskets and the cords, and cook the food. Whether she was the common property of the clan, whether there were group-marriages and promiscuity, even the latest authorities differ. But in the vast majority of cases her lot was pitiable. Initiated to married life with brutal usage, evading child-bearing by such crude means as she had, working far more than the men, and never consulted in tribal affairs, she seems fairly entitled to the name of slave, which Westermarck would refuse her. If there were tribes in which the husband could not kill or cast her off without the sanction of the tribe, it was only a transfer of power from one man to a group of men. If there were tribes in which she had gentler treatment, and might rise to the height of bullying her husband, the general rule was that she bore most of the burden, and waited humbly like a dog for the remains of her husband's meal.