The main reason, however, why an Australian marries is in order that he may have a drudge. I have previously cited Eyre's statement that the natives
"value a wife principally as a slave; in fact, when asked why they are anxious to obtain wives, their usual reply is, that they may get wood, water, and food for them, and carry whatever property they possess."
H. Kempe (loc. cit., 55) says that
"if there are plenty of girls they are married as early as possible (at the age of eight to ten), as far as possible to one and the same man, for as it is the duty of the women to provide food, a man who has several wives can enjoy his leisure the more thoroughly."
And Lindsay Cranford testifies (Jour. Anthrop. Inst., XXIV., 181) regarding the Victoria River natives that,
"after about thirty years of age a man is allowed to have as many women as he likes, and the older he gets the younger the girls are that he gets, probably to work and get food for him, for in their wild state the man is too proud to do anything except carry a woomera and spear."
Under these circumstances it is needless to say that there is not a trace of romance connected with an Australian marriage. After a man has secured his girl, she quietly submits and goes with him as his wife and drudge, to build his camp, gather firewood, fetch water, make nets, clear away grass, dig roots, fish for mussels, be his baggage mule on journeys, etc. (Brough Smyth, 84); and Eyre (II., 319) thus completes the picture. There is, he says, no marriage ceremony:
"In those cases where I have witnessed the giving away of a wife, the woman was simply ordered by the nearest male relative in whose disposal she was, to take up her 'rocko,' the bag in which a female carries the effects of her husband, and go to the man's camp to whom she had been given."
CURIOSITIES OF JEALOUSY
Thus the woman becomes the man's slave—his property in every sense of the word. No matter how he obtained her—by capture, elopement, or exchange for another woman—she is his own, as much as his spear or his boomerang. "The husband is the absolute owner of the wife," says Curr (I., 109). To cite Eyre once more (318):