This evening I learnt that, besides the members of the arreoy society, it is the common practice among all ranks to strangle infants the moment they are born. A perpetrator of this horrid act was among those whom curiosity drew to visit us: she was a good-looking woman, and esteemed by the natives a great beauty, which I suppose to be the inducement that tempted her to murder her child; for here the number of women bearing no proportion to the men, those esteemed handsome are courted with great gifts, and get so accustomed to change their husbands, to go with them from place to place, and run after the diversions of the island, that rather than be debarred these pleasures, they stifle a parent’s feelings, and murder their tender offspring.2

2 Wilson, , 194.