OCR Text |
Show THE PRICh OF A WIFE. '- ' Si rust's I'laro u Varying Yntn Upon Their t Ihimmi ncMu:itc-t. In the earliest times of purchase a woman whs bartered for usetul yoo:U or ior services rendered toiler father. In the latter way Jacob pmvhased liaehel and her sister Leah. This was a Heena marriage, where a man. a ; iu tienesis, leaves his father and his mother and cleaves unto his wife and they become one flesh 01 Icin the woman's. The price of a bride in British Brit-ish Columbia and Vancouver inland varies from twenty to forty pounds sterling's wouih of articles. In Cretin an Indian ives for a wife horses, blankets or bn train robes; in Calif oruia, shell money or horses: in Africa, cattle. cat-tle. A poor Damara will sell n daujj-hier for one cow; a richer Kallir expects from three to thirty. W illi t he llanyai, if nothing be (riven, her family claim her children. In Upamln, where no marriage recently existed, she m;iy be obtained for half a dozen needles, or a. coat, or a pair of shoes. An ordinary price is a box of percussion cups. In other parts, a goat or a couple uf buckskins buck-skins will buy u girl. Passing to Asia, we find her price is sometimes live to lift y rubles, or at others, u cartload of wood or hay. A princess may be purchased pur-chased for three thousand rubles. In Tartary, a woman can be obtained for I a few pounds of butter, or where a rich I inn 11 gives twenty small oxen a poor man may succeed with a pig. In Fiji, her equivalent is a whale's tooth or a musket. These, and similar prices elsewhere, else-where, are eloquent testimony to the little value a savage sets on his wife, |