The very unequal distribution of the female sex, which arises from this cause, has rendered prevalent the custom of stealing wives; and as women are of great value, not only on account of the personal attachment which they might be supposed to excite, but from the fact of all laborious tasks being performed, and a great portion of the food of the family being also collected by them, every precaution is taken to prevent them from forming any acquaintances which would be likely to terminate in their abduction.
A stern and vigilant jealousy is commonly felt by every married man; he cannot, from the roving nature of their mode of life, surround his wives with the walls of a seraglio, but custom and etiquette have drawn about them barriers nearly as impassable.

When a certain number of families are collected together they encamp at a common spot; and each family has a separate hut, or perhaps two.

At these huts sleep the father of the family, his wives, the female children who have not yet joined their husbands, and very young boys; occasionally female relatives, who from some temporary cause have no male protector with them, also sleep at this fire; but the young men and boys of ten years old and upwards are obliged to sleep in their own portion of the encampment, where they themselves, or more generally, some of their mothers, build for them two or three huts, in which those related within certain degrees of consanguinity sleep together.
SOCIAL CUSTOMS.
When strangers are with a party upon a visit, if attended by their wives, they sleep in their own huts, which are placed among those of the married people; but if their wives are not with them, or if they are unmarried, they sleep at the fire of the young men.
MODE OF CONVERSATIONAL INTERCOURSE.

MODE OF RECITING EVENTS.
Under no circumstances is a strange native allowed to approach the fire of a married man; in the daytime they hunt or occupy themselves with the men, and at night they either sit at their own fire, or that of the young men.

Their huts being placed at a little distance from one another, such an arrangement would appear to put an end to anything like social intercourse or conversation; but they have invented a means of overcoming this difficulty by making a species of chant, or recitative, their customary mode of address to each other.