A baneful promiscuous intercourse of the sexes is hereby avoided, and virtue, without being clamorously invoked, is, as it were, unconsciously practised.
The contrast exhibited between the Marquesas and other islands of the Pacific in this respect, is worthy of being noticed.

At Tahiti the marriage tie was altogether unknown; and the relation of husband and wife, father and son, could hardly be said to exist.

The Arreory Society--one of the most singular institutions that ever existed in any part of the world--spread universal licentiousness over the island.

It was the voluptuous character of these people which rendered the disease introduced among them by De Bougainville's ships, in 1768, doubly destructive.

It visited them like a plague, sweeping them off by hundreds.
Notwithstanding the existence of wedlock among the Typees, the Scriptural injunction to increase and multiply seems to be but indifferently attended to.