BOOK XVI.
How the Laws of domestic Slavery have a Relation to the Nature of the Climate.
CHAP. I.
Of domestic Servitude.
Book XVI.
Chap. 1, & 2.SLAVES are established for the family; but they are not a part of it. Thus I distinguish their servitude from that which the women in some countries suffer, and which I shall properly call domestic servitude.
CHAP. II.
That in the Countries of the South there is a natural Inequality between the two Sexes.
WOMEN, in hot climates, are[1] marriageable at eight, nine, or ten years of age; thus, in those countries, infancy and marriage almost always go together. They are old at twenty: Their reason therefore never accompanies their beauty. When beauty demands the empire, the want of reason forbids the claim; when reason is obtained, beauty
- ↑ Mahomet married Cadhisia at five, and took her to his bed at eight ye;irs old. In the hot countries of Arabia and the Indies. girls are marriageable at eight years of age, and are brought to bed the year after. Prideaux, Life of Mahomet. We see women in the kingdom of Algiers pregnant at nine, ten, and eleven years of age. Hist. of the Kingdom of Algiers by Logiers de Tossis, p. 61.
