“the eloping couple are at once followed up and then, if caught, the woman is, if not killed on the spot, at all events treated in such a way that any further attempt at elopement on her part is not likely to take place.”

Sometimes the husband seems glad to have got rid of his wife, for when the elopers return to camp he first has his revenge by cutting the legs and body of both and then he cries “You keep altogether, I throw away, I throw away.”

It is instructive to note with what ingenuity the natives seek to prevent matches based on mutual inclination.  Taplin says (11) of the Narrinyeri that “a young woman who goes away with a man and lives with him as his wife without the consent of her relatives is regarded as very little better than a prostitute.”  Among these same Narrinyeri, says Gason, “it is considered disgraceful for a woman to take a husband who has given no other woman for her.” (Bonwick, 245.) The deliberate animosity against free choice is emphasized by a statement in Brough Smyth (79), that if the owner of an eloping female suspects that she favored the man she eloped with, “he will not hesitate to maim or kill her.”  She must have no choice or preference of her own, under any circumstances.  It must be remembered, too, that even an actual elopement by no means proves that the woman is following a special inclination.  She may be merely anxious to get away from a cruel or superannuated husband.  In such cases the woman may take the initiative.  Dawson (65) once said to a native, “You should not have carried Mary away from her husband”; to which the man replied, “Bael (not) dat, massa; Mary come me.  Dat husband wurry bad man:  he waddy (beat) Mary.  Mary no like it, so it leabe it.  Dat fellow no good, massa.”

Obviously, Australian elopement not only gives no indication of romantic feelings, but even as an incident it is apt to be prosaic or cruel rather than romantic, as our elopements are.  In many cases it is hard to distinguish from brutal capture, as we may infer from an incident related by Curr (108-9).  He was sleeping at a station on the Lachlan.

“During the night I was awoke by the scream of a woman, and a general yell from the men in the camp.  Not knowing what could be the matter, I seized a weapon, jumped out of bed, and rushed outside.  There I found a young married woman standing by her fire, trembling all over, with a barbed spear through her thigh.  As for the men, they were rushing about, here and there, in an excited state, with their spears in their hands.  The woman’s story was soon told.  She had gone to the river, not fifty yards off, for water; the Darling black had stolen after her, and proposed to her to elope with him, and, on her declining to do so, had speared her and taken to his heels.”

A pathetic instance of the cruel treatment to which the natives subject girls who venture to have inclinations of their own was communicated by W.E.  Stanbridge to Brough Smyth (80).  The scene is a little dell among undulating grassy plains.  In the lower part of the dell a limpid spring bursts forth.