Identifier: sandwichislandno01bate (find matches)
Title: Sandwich island notes
Year: 1854 (1850s)
Authors: Bates, George Washington
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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aste. How far this assertion is true will beseen in the following facts that occurred under my own ob-servation. I had not been in that house ten minutes before I noticed a NATIVE MORALS. 283 wide difference between the people in that village and in theValley of Halawa. I had been urged to visit the Palls on theassurance that foreigners seldom or never went there. Nowthat I was among the people, I resolved to see all I could ofnative character. My appearance was uncouth enough to betaken for a runaway sailor. In view of this, the natives—es-pecially the women—manifested every possible freedom, for bythis time quite a little crowd had collected in and around thehouse in which I was staying. Two or three of the womenwere very desirous of finding my pockets and testing their con-tents, and, had I permitted them, they would soon have leftme minus of nondescripts. In that respect I concluded theyhad gone far enough, so I motioned them away, and patient-ly awaited the rest of the drama.
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=ToIs77vC-BAtWlr NATIVE FEMALE—MODE OF SITTING. I sat smoking a cigar. Just before me sat a young woman,nude to the waist, and covered with a syphilitic eruption.Her hair was hanging down her back in tangled and filthy 284 SANDWICH ISLAND NOTES. masses. In that condition she was feeding her child from Natures Nile. And that infant, from the crown of itshead to the soles of its feet—for it was quite nude—was cov-ered, like its mother, with a disgusting cutaneous disease. Ilooked another way, and several parties were performing com-ic acts which should never be performed only behind the thickcurtain of night. But my presence and the light of day hadnot the least influence on their motives and actions, for theycompleted what they so unceremoniously begun—amid theshouts of the by-standers.

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