our rank, sometimes as many as one hundred together,
and we either turn them into wives, or make servants of
them, as we please."


NOT A PARTICLE OF ROMANCE

The northeastern boundary of Uganda is formed by the waters of the
lake whose name Sir Samuel Baker chose for the title of one of his
fascinating books on African travel, the _Albert N'yanza_. Baker was a
keen observer and he had abundant experience on which to base the
following conclusions (148):

"There is no such thing as love in these countries, the
feeling is not understood, nor does it exist in the
shape in which we understand it. Everything is
practical, without a particle of romance. Women are so
far appreciated as they are valuable animals. They
grind the corn, fetch the water, gather firewood,
cement the floors, cook the food, and propagate the
race; but they are mere servants, and as such are
valuable.... A savage holds to his cows and to his
women, but especially to his cows. In a razzia fight he
will seldom stand for the sake of his wives, but when
he does fight it is to save his cattle."

The sentimentalist's heart will throb with a flutter of hope when he
reads in the same book (240) that among the Latookas it is considered
a disgrace to kill a woman in war. Have these men that respect for
women which makes romantic love possible? Alas, no! They spare them
because women are scarce and have a money value, a female being worth
from five to ten cows, according to her age and appearance. It would
therefore be a waste of money to kill them.

I may as well add here what Baker says elsewhere (_Ismailia_, 501) by
way of explaining why there is no insanity in Central Africa: there
are "no hearts to break with overwhelming love." Where coarseness is
bliss, 'twere folly to be refined.


NO LOVE AMONG NEGROES

Let us now cross Central Africa into the Congo region on the Western
side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the
Abyssinians, the Somali, and their neighbors.

In his book _Angola and the River Congo_ (133-34) Monteiro says that
negroes show less tenderness and love than some animals:

"In all the long years I have been in Africa I have
never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for or
to a negress.... I have never seen a negro put his arm
round a woman's waist or give or receive any caress
whatever that would indicate the slightest loving
regard or affection on either side. They have no words
or expressions in their language indicative of
affection or love. Their passion is purely of an animal
description, unaccompanied by the least sympathetic
affections of love or endearment."[145]

In other words, these negroes not only do not show any tenderness,
affection, sympathy, in their sexual relations, they are too coarse
even to appreciate the more subtle manifestations of sensual passion
which we call caresses. Jealousy, too, Monteiro says, hardly exists.
In case of adultery "the fine is generally a pig, and rum or other
drink, with which a feast is celebrated by all parties. The woman is
not punished in any way, nor does any disgrace attach to her conduct."
As a matter of course, where all these sentiments are lacking,
admiration of personal beauty cannot exist.

"From their utter want of love and appreciation of female
beauty or charms they are quite satisfied and content with
any woman possessing even the greatest amount of hideous
ugliness with which nature has so bountifully provided
them."


A QUEER STORY

Thus we find the African mind differing from ours as widely as a
picture seen directly with the eyes differs from one reflected in a
concave mirror. This is vividly illustrated by a quaint story recorded
in the _Folk Tales of Angola_ (_Memoirs of Amer. Folk Lore Soc._, Vol.
I., 1804, 235-39), of which the following is a condensed version:

An elderly man had an only child, a daughter. This
daughter, a number of men wanted her. But whenever a
suitor came, her father demanded of him a living deer;
and then they all gave up, saying, "The living deer, we
cannot get it."

One day two men came, each asking for the daughter. The
father answered as usual, "He who brings me the living
deer; the same, I will give him my daughter."

The two men made up their minds to hunt for the living
deer in the forest. They came across one and pursued
it; but one of them soon got tired and said to himself:
"That woman will destroy my life. Shall I suffer
distress because of a woman? If I bring her home, if
she dies, would I seek another? I will not run again to
catch a living deer. I never saw it, that a girl was
wooed with a living deer." And he gave up the chase.

The other man persevered and caught the deer. When he
approached with it, his companion said, "Friend, the
deer, didst thou catch it indeed?" Then the other: "I
caught it. The girl delights me much. Rather I would
sleep in forest, than to fail to catch it."

Then they returned to the father and brought him the
deer. But the father called four old men, told them
what had happened, and asked them to choose a
son-in-law for him among the two hunters. Being
questioned by the aged men, the successful hunter said:
"My comrade pursued and gave up; I, your daughter
charmed me much, even to the heart, and I pursued the
deer till it gave in.... My comrade he came only to
accompany me."

Then the other was asked why he gave up the chase, if
he wanted the girl, and he replied: "I never saw that
they wooed a girl with a deer.... When I saw the great
running I said, 'No, that woman will cost my life.
Women are plentiful,' and I sat down to await my
comrade."

Then the aged men: "Thou who gavest up catching the
deer, thou art our son-in-law. This gentleman who
caught the deer, he may go with it; he may eat it or he
may sell it, for he is a man of great heart. If he
wants to kill he kills at once; he does not listen to
one who scolds him, or gives him advice. Our daughter,
if we gave her to him, and she did wrong, when he would
beat her he would not hear (one) who entreats for her.
We do not want him; let him go. This gentleman who gave
up the deer, he is our son-in-law; because, our
daughter, when she does wrong, when we come to pacify
him, he will listen to us. Although he were in great
anger, when he sees us, his anger will cease. He is our
good son-in-law, whom we have chosen."


SUICIDES

According to Livingstone, in Angola suicide is sometimes committed by
a girl if it is predicted to her that she will never have any
children, which would be a great disgrace. A writer in the _Globus_
(Vol. 69, p. 358) sums up the observations of the medical missionary,
G. Liengme, on suicides among the peoples of Africa. The most frequent
cause is a family quarrel. Sometimes a girl commits suicide rather
than marry a man whom she detests, "whereas on the other hand suicide
from unhappy love seems to be unknown." In another number of the
_Globus_ (70: 100), however, I find mention of a negro who killed
himself because he could not get the girl he wanted. This, of course,
does not of itself suffice to prove the existence of true love, for we
know that lust may be as maddening and as obstinate as love itself;
moreover, as we shall see in the chapter on American Indians, suicide
does not argue strong feelings, but a weak intellect. Savages are apt
to kill themselves, as we shall see, on the slightest and most trivial
provocation.


POETIC LOVE ON THE CONGO

In his entertaining book on the Congo, H.H. Johnston says (423) of the
races living along the upper part of that river: "They are decidedly
amorous in disposition, but there is a certain poetry in their
feelings which ennobles their love above the mere sexual lust of the
negro." If this is true, it is one of the most important discoveries
ever made by an African explorer, one on which we should expect the
author to dwell at great length. What does he tell us about the Congo
tribes? "The women," he says of the Ba-Kongo, "have little regard for
their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the
jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the
sexes." These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a
white man's mistress:

"Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy
among themselves, they are far from displaying anything
but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept
the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or
in consideration of some small payment. Unmarried girls
they are more chary of offering, as their value in the
market is greater; but it may be truly said that among
these people womanly chastity is unknown and a woman's
honor is measured by the price she costs."

These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of
the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which
ennoble love. Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line,
we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love. One day, the
author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the shore of the Pool,
where there was a family with two marriageable daughters. The father

"was most anxious I should become his son-in-law,
'moyennant' several 'longs' of cloth. Seeing my
hesitation, he mistook it for scorn and hastened to
point out the manifold charms of his girls, whilst
these damsels waxed hotly indignant at my coldness.
Then another inspiration seized their father--perhaps I
liked a maturer style of beauty, and his wife, by no
means an uncomely person, was dragged forward while her
husband explained with the most expressive gestures,
putting his outspread hands before his eyes and
affecting to look another way, that, again with the
simple intermediary of a little cloth, he would remain
perfectly unconscious of whatever amatory passages
might occur between us."

Evidently the poetry of love had not drifted down as far as the Pool.
Let us therefore see what Johnston has to say of the Upper Congo
(423):

"Husbands are fond of their own wives, _as well as of those
of other people_." "Marriage is _a mere question of
purchase_, and is attended by no rejoicings or special
ceremony. A man procures _as many wives as possible_, partly
because they labor for him and also because soon after one
wife becomes with child _she leaves him for two or three
years_ until her baby is weaned." Apart from these facts
Johnston gives us no hint as to what he understands by
affection except what the following sentence allows us to
infer (429):

"The attachment between these dogs and their African
masters is deep and fully reciprocated. They are
_considered very dainty eating_ by the natives, and are
indeed such a luxury that by an unwritten law only _the
superior sex_--the men--are allowed to partake of
roasted dog."

The amusing italics are mine.

If Johnston really found traces of poetic, ennobling love in this
region, surely so startling a novelty in West Africa would have called
for a full "bill of particulars," which would have been of infinitely
greater scientific value than the details he gives regarding
unchastity, infidelity, commercialism, separation from wives and
contempt for women, which are so common throughout the continent as to
call for no special notice. Evidently his ideas regarding "poetic
love" were as hazy as those of some other writers quoted in this
chapter, and we have once more been led on by the mirage of a "false
fact."[146]

In 1891 the Swedish explorer Westermarck published a book describing
his adventures among the cannibal tribes of the Upper Congo. I have
not seen the book, but the Rev. James Johnston, in summing up its
contents, says (193):

"A man can sell wife and children according to his own
depraved pleasure. Women are the slave drudges, the men
spending their hours in eating, drinking, and sleeping.
Cannibalism in its worst features prevails. Young women
are prized as special delicacies, particularly girls'
ears prepared in palm oil, and, in order to make the
flesh more palatable, the luckless victims are kept in
water up to their necks for three or four days before
they are slaughtered and served as food."


BLACK LOVE IN KAMERUN

From the banks of the Congo to Kamerun is not a very far cry as
distances go in Africa. Kamerun is under the German flag, and a German
writer, Hugo Zöller, has described life in that colony with the eyes
of a shrewd observer. What he says about the negro's capacity for love
shows deep psychological insight (III., 68-70):

"Europeans residing in Africa who have married a negro
woman declare unanimously that there is no such thing
there as love and fidelity in the European sense. It
happens with infinitely greater frequency that a
European falls in love with his black companion than
she with him; or rather the latter does not happen at
all. A hundred times I have listened to discussions of
this topic in many different places, but I have never
heard of a single case of a genuine full-blooded
negress falling in love with a white man.... The
stupidest European peasant girl is, in comparison with
an African princess, still an ideally endowed being."

Zöller adds that in all his African experiences he never found a
negress of whom he should have been willing to assume that she would
sacrifice herself for a man she was attached to. On another page he
says:

"A negro woman does not fall in love in the same sense
as a European, not even as the least civilized peasant
girl. Love, in our sense of the word, is a product of
our culture belonging to a higher stage in the
development of latent faculties than the negro race has
reached. Not only is the negro a stranger to the
diverse intellectual and sentimental qualities which we
denote by the name of love: nay, even in a purely
bodily sense it may be asserted that his nervous system
is not only less sensitive, but less well-developed.
The negro loves as he eats and drinks.... And just as
little as a black epicure have I ever been able to
discover a negro who could rise to the imaginative
phases of amorous dalliance. A negro ... may buy dozens
upon dozens of wives without ever being drawn by an
overpowering feeling to any one of them. Love is, among
the blacks, as much a matter of money as the palm oil
or ivory trade. The black man buys his wife when she is
still a child; when she reaches the age at which our
maidens go to their first ball, her nervous system,
which never was particularly sensitive anyway, is
completely blunted, so that she takes it as a matter of
course to be sold again and again as a piece of
property. One hears often enough of a 'woman palaver,'
which is regarded exactly like a 'goat palaver,' as a
damage to property, but one never, positively never,
hears of a love-affair. The negress never has a
sweetheart, either in her youngest days or after her
so-called marriage. She is regarded, and regards
herself, as a piece of property and a beast of burden."


A SLAVE COAST LOVE-STORY

Travelling a short distance northwest from Kamerun we reach the Slave
Coast of West Africa, to which A.B. Ellis has devoted two interesting
books, including chapters in the folklore of the Yoruba and
Ewe-speaking peoples of this region. Among the tales recorded are two
which illustrate African ideas regarding love. I copy the first
verbatim from Ellis's book on the Yoruba (269-70):

"There was a young maiden named Buje, the slender, whom
all the men wanted. The rich wanted her, but she
refused. Chiefs wanted her, and she refused. The King
wanted her, and she still refused.

"Tortoise came to the King and said to him, 'She whom
you all want and cannot get, I will get. I will have
her, I.' And the King said, 'If you succeed in having
her, I will divide my palace into two halves and will
give you one-half.'

"One day Buje, the slender, took an earthen pot and
went to fetch water. Tortoise, seeing this, took his
hoe, and cleared the path that led to the spring. He
found a snake in the grass, and killed it. Then he put
the snake in the middle of the path.

"When Buje, the slender, had filled her pot, she came
back. She saw the snake in the path, and called out,
'Hi! hi! Come and kill this snake.'

"Tortoise ran up with his cutlass in his hand. He
struck at the snake and wounded himself in the leg.

"Then he cried out, 'Buje the slender, has killed me. I
was cutting the bush, I was clearing the path for her.
She called to me to kill the snake, but I have wounded
myself in the leg. O Buje, the slender, Buje, the
slender, take me upon your back and hold me close.'

"He cried this many times, and at last Buje, the
slender, took Tortoise and put him on her back. And
then he slipped his legs down over her hips....

"Next day, as soon as it was light, Tortoise went to
the King. He said, 'Did I not tell you I should have
Buje, the slender? Call all the people of the town to
assemble on the fifth day, and you will hear what I
have to say.'

"When it was the fifth day, the King sent out his crier
to call all the people together. The people came.
Tortoise cried out, 'Everybody wanted Buje, the
slender, and Buje refused everybody, but I have had
her.'

"The King sent a messenger, with his stick, to summon
Buje, the slender. When she came the King said, 'We
have heard that Tortoise is your husband; is it so?'

"Buje, the slender, was ashamed, and could not answer.
She covered her head with her cloth, and ran away into
the bush.

"And there she was changed into the plant called Buje."


THE MAIDEN WHO ALWAYS REFUSED

Robert Hartmann (480) describes the Yoruba people as vivacious and
intelligent. But the details given by Ellis (154) regarding the
peculiar functions of bridesmaids, and the assertion that "virginity
in a bride is only of paramount importance when the girl has been
betrothed in childhood," explain sufficiently why we must not look for
sentimental features in a Yoruba love-story. The most noticeable thing
in the above tale is the girl's power to refuse chiefs and even the
King. In Ellis's book on the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast,
there is also a love-story (271) concerning a "Maiden who always
refused." It has a moral which seems to indicate masculine disapproval
of such a feminine privilege. The following is a condensed version:

There was a beautiful girl whose parents were rich. Men
came to marry her, but she always said "Not yet." Men
continued to come, but she said "My shape is good, my
skin is good, therefore I shall stay;" and she stayed.

Now the leopard, in the leopard's place, hears this. He
turns himself to resemble man. He takes a musical
instrument in his hand and makes himself a fine young
man. His shape is good. Then he goes to the parents of
the maiden and says, "I look strong and manly, but I do
not look stronger than I love." Then the father says,
"Who looks strong takes;" and the young man says, "I am
ready."

The young man comes in the house. His shape pleases the
young girl. They give him to eat and they give him to
drink. Then the young man asks the maiden if she is
ready to go, and the maiden says she is ready to go.
Her parents give her two female slaves to take along,
and goats, sheep, and fowls. Ere long, as they travel
along the road, the husband says, "I am hungry." He
eats the fowls, but is still hungry: he eats the goats
and sheep and is hungry still. The two slaves next fall
a victim to his voracity, and then he says, "I am
hungry."

Then the wife weeps and cries aloud and throws herself
on the ground. Immediately the leopard, having resumed
his own shape, makes a leap toward her. But there is a
hunter concealed in the bush; he has witnessed the
scene; he aims his gun and kills the leopard on the
leap. Then he cuts off his tail and takes the young
woman home.

"This is the way of young women," the tale concludes.
"The young men come to ask; the young women meet them,
and continue to refuse--again, again, again--and so the
wild animals turn themselves into men and carry them
off."


AFRICAN STORY-BOOKS

While the main object of this discussion is to show that Africans are
incapable of feeling sentimental love, I have taken the greatest pains
to discover such traces of more refined feelings as may exist. These
one might expect to find particularly in the collections of African
tales such as Callaway's _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, Theal's _Kaffir
Folk Lore_, the _Folk Lore of Angola_, Stanley's _My Dark Companions
and their Stories_, Koelle's _African Native Literature_, Jacottet's
_Contes Populaires des Bassoutos_. All that I have been able to find
in these books and others bearing on our topic is included in this
chapter--and how very little it is! Love, even of the sensual kind,
seems to be almost entirely ignored by these dusky story-tellers in
favor of a hundred other subjects--in striking contrast to our own
literature, in which love is the ruling passion. I have before me
another interesting collection of South and North African stories and
fables--Bleek's _Reinecke Fuchs in Afrika_. Its author had unusual
facilities for collecting them, having been curator of Sir G. Grey's
library at Cape Town, which includes a fine collection of African
manuscripts. In Bleek's book there are forty-four South African,
chiefly Hottentot, fables and tales, and thirty-nine relating to North
Africans. Yet among these eighty-three tales there are only three that
come under the head of love-stories. As they take up eight pages, I
can give only a condensed version of them, taking care, however, to
omit no essential feature.[147]


THE FIVE SUITORS

Four handsome youths tried to win a beautiful girl
living in the same town. While they were quarrelling
among themselves a youth came from another town, lifted
the girl on his horse and galloped away with her. The
father followed in pursuit on his camel, entered the
youth's house, and brought back the girl.

One day the father called together all the men of his
tribe. The girl stepped among them and said, "Whoever
of you can ride on my father's camel without falling
off, may have me as wife." Dressed in their best
finery, the young men tried, one after another, but
were all thrown. Among them sat the stranger youth,
wrapped only in a mat. Turning toward him the girl
said, "Let the stranger make a trial." The men
demurred, but the stranger got on the camel, rode about
the party three times safely, and when he passed the
girl for the fourth time he snatched her up and rode
away with her hastily.

Quickly the father mounted his fleet horse and followed
the fugitives. He gained on them until his horse's head
touched the camel's tail. At that moment the youth
reached his home, jumped off the camel and carried the
bride into the house. He closed the door so violently
that one foot of the pursuing horse caught between the
posts. The father drew it out with difficulty and
returned to the four disappointed suitors.


TAMBA AND THE PRINCESS

A king had a beautiful daughter and many desired to
marry her. But all failed, because none could answer
the King's question: "What is enclosed in my amulet?"
Undismayed by the failure of men of wealth and rank,
Tamba, who lived far in the East and had nothing to
boast of, made up his mind to win the princess. His
friends laughed at him but he started out on his trip,
taking with him some chickens, a goat, rice,
rice-straw, millet-seed, and palm-oil. He met in
succession a hungry porcupine, an alligator, a horned
viper, and some ants, of all of whom he made friends by
feeding them the things he had taken along. He reserved
some of the rice, and when he arrived at the King's
court he gave it to a hungry servant who in turn told
him the secret of the amulet. So when he was asked what
the amulet contained, he replied: "Hair clipped from
the King's head when he was a child; a piece of the
calabash from which he first drank milk; and the tooth
of the first snake he killed."

This answer angered the King's minister, and Tamba was
put in chains. He was subjected to various tests which
he overcame with the aid of the animals he had fed on
his trip. But again he was fettered and even lashed.

One day the King wanted to bathe, so he sent his four
wives to fetch water. A young girl accompanying them
saw how all of them were bitten by a horned viper and
ran back to tell the news. The wives were brought back
unconscious, and no one could help them. The King then
thought of Tamba, who was brought before him. Tamba
administered an antidote which the viper he had fed had
given him, the wives recovered, the wicked minister was
beheaded and Tamba was rewarded with the hand of the
princess.


THE SEWING MATCH

The third tale is herewith translated verbatim:

"There was a man who had a most beautiful daughter, the
favorite of all the young men of the place; two,
especially, tried to win her regard. One day these two
came together and begged her to choose one of them. The
young girl called her father; when the young men had
told him that they were suing for his daughter's hand,
he requested them to come there the next day, when he
would set them a task and the one who got through with
it first should have the girl.

"Meanwhile the father bought in the market a piece of
cloth and cut it up for two garments. Now when the two
rivals appeared the next morning he gave to each the
materials for a garment and told them to sew them
together, promising his daughter to the one who should
get done first. The daughter he ordered to thread the
needles for both the men.

"Now the girl knew very well which of the two young men
she would rather have for a husband; to him, therefore,
she always handed needles with short threads, while the
other was always supplied with long threads. Noon came
and neither of them had finished his garment. After
awhile, however, the one who always got the short
threads finished his task.

"The father was then summoned and the young man showed
him the garment; whereupon the father said: 'You are a
quick worker and will therefore surely be able to
support your wife. Take my daughter as your wife and
always do your work rapidly, then you will always have
food for yourself and your wife.'

"Thus did the young man win his beloved by means of her
cunning. Joyfully he led her home as his wife."


BALING OUT THE BROOK

This tale reveals the existence of individual preference, but does not
hint at any other ingredient of love, while the father's promise of
the girl to the fastest worker shows a total indifference to what that
preference might be. In the following tale (also from Koelle) the girl
again is not consulted.

"A certain man had a most beautiful daughter who was
beset by many suitors. But as soon as they were told
that the sole condition on which they could obtain her
was to bale out a brook with a ground-nut shell (which
is about half the size of a walnut shell), they always
walked away in disappointment. However, at last one
took heart of grace, and began the task. He obtained
the beauty; for the father said, '_Kam ago tsuru
baditsia tsido_--he who undertakes whatever he says,
will do it.'"


PROVERBS ABOUT WOMEN

The last two tales I have cited were gathered among the Bornu people
in the Soudan. In Burton's _Wit and Wisdom from West Africa_ we find a
few proverbs about women that are current in the same region.

"If a woman speaks two words, take one and leave the other."
"Whatever be thy intimacy, never give thy heart to a woman."
"If thou givest thy heart to a woman, she will kill thee."
"If a man tells his secrets to his wife, she will bring him
into the way of Satan." "A woman never brings a man into the
right way." "Men who listen to what women say, are counted
as women."

It is significant that in the four hundred and fifty-five pages of
Burton's book, which includes over four hundred proverbs and tales,
there are only half a dozen brief references to women, and those are
sneers.


AFRICAN AMAZONS

As I have had occasion to remark before, African women lack the finer
feminine qualities, both bodily and mental, wherefore even if an
African man were able to feel sentimental love he could not find an
object to bestow it on. An incident related by Du Chaillu (_Ashango
Land_, 187) illustrates the martial side of African femininity. A
married man named Mayolo had called another man's wife toward him. His
own wife, hearing of this, got jealous, told him the other must be his
sweetheart, and rushed out to seek her rival. A battle ensued:

"Women's fights in this country always begin by their
throwing off their _dengui_--that is, stripping
themselves entirely naked. The challenger having thus
denuded herself, her enemy showed pluck and answered
the challenge by promptly doing the same; so that the
two elegant figures immediately went at it literally
tooth and nail, for they fought like cats, and between
the rounds reviled each other in language the most
filthy that could possibly be uttered. Mayolo being
asleep in his house, and no one seeming ready to
interfere, I went myself and separated the two furies."

In Dahomey, as everybody knows, the bellicose possibilities of the
African woman have been utilized in forming bands of Amazons which are
described as "the flower of the army." They are made up of female
captives and other women, wear special uniforms, and in battle are
credited with even greater ferocity than the men. These women are
Amazons not of their own accord but by order of the king. But in other
parts of Africa there is reason to believe that bands of
self-constituted female warriors have existed at various times.
Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the time of Julius Caesar, says that on
the western coast of Libya (Africa) there used to live a people
governed by women, who carried on wars and the government, the men
being obliged to do domestic work and take care of the children. In
our time Livingstone found in the villages of the Bechuanas and Banyas
that men were often badly treated by the women, and the eminent German
anthropologist Bastian says(_S.S._, 178) that in "the Soudan the power
of the women banded together for mutual protection is so great that
men are often put under ban and obliged to emigrate." Mungo Park
described the curious bugaboo(_mumbo-jumbo_)by means of which the
Mandingo negroes used to keep their rebellious women in subjection.
According to Bastian, associations for keeping women in subjection are
common among men along the whole African West Coast. The women, too,
have their associations, and at their meetings compare notes on the
meanness and cruelty of their husbands. Now it is easy to conceive
that among tribes where many of the men have been killed off in wars
the women, being in a great majority, may, for a time at least, turn
the tables on the men, assume their weapons and make them realize how
it feels to be the "inferior sex." For this reason Bastian sees no
occasion to share the modern disposition to regard all the Amazon
legends as myths.


WHERE WOMAN COMMANDS

If we now return from the West Coast to Eastern Africa we find on the
northern confines of Abyssinia a strange case of the subjection of
men, which Munzinger has described in his _Ostafrikanische Studien_
(275-338). The Beni Amer are a tribe of Mohammedan shepherds among
whom "the sexes seem to have exchanged rôles, the women being more
masculine in their work." Property is legally held in common,
wherefore the men rarely dare to do anything without consulting their
wives. In return for this submission they are treated with the utmost
contempt:

"For every angry word that the husband utters he is
compelled to pay a fine, and perhaps spend a whole
rainy night outdoors till he has promised to give his
weaker half a camel and a cow. Thus the wife acquires a
property of her own, which the husband never is allowed
to touch; many women have in this way ruined their
husbands and then left them. The women have much
_esprit de corps_; if one of them has ground for