CHAPTER VII.

EARLY WEDDING CUSTOMS.

Curious wedding custom of the Garos, in India—Natural affection among savages, tested by some of the evidence of eye-witnesses—Love-stories—Treatment of women not uniformly bad among savages—Married life—Duty of bashfulness, displayed in curious manners and notions of the Esquimaux, the Hottentots, the Hos, the Thlinkeets, the Kirghiz, Kamschadals, the Bushmen, the Zulus, and the Bedouins—Conventional reserve between husband and wife—Restrictions on intercourse between near relations—Kicking and screaming the _proper_ behaviour at weddings—Real disinclination also often a cause for the employment of real force—The ceremony of capture affords a bride a real chance of escape from a bridegroom she dislikes—Mercantile aspect of marriage—Marriages by capture often voluntary elopements in defeat of parental contracts, illustrated by customs in India, Afghanistan, Bokhara—Such marriages legalised by successful elopement and subsequent settlement with parents—Exogamy and endogamy, how related—Doubtful origin of exogamy—Its effect in preserving peace between tribes—Woman-stealing the result of artificial social customs—Origin of the difference of language between the sexes among the Caribs—The same phenomenon among the Zulus—Doubtful evidence of a total absence of marriage ceremonies 188-238