husband before she had had a child, he may keep the cattle. Should only one child have been born when the husband dies, and the woman be still young and marriageable, a part of the cattle can be recovered. I have known it to be stated,—in the House of Commons and elsewhere,—that wives are bought and sold among the Kafirs. Such an assertion gives a wrong idea of the custom. Wives are bought, but are never sold. The girl is sold, that she may become a wife; but the husband cannot sell her. The custom as it exists is sufficiently repulsive. As the women are made to work,—made to do all the hard work where European habits have not been partially introduced,—a wife of course is valuable as a servant. To call them slaves is to give a false representation of their position. A wife in England has to obey her husband, but she is not his slave. The Kafir wife though she may hoe the land while the husband only fights or searches for game, does not hold a mean position in her husband's hut. But the old are more wealthy than the young, and therefore the old and rich buy up the wives, leaving no wives for the young men,—with results which may easily be understood. The practice is abominable,—but we shall not alter it by conceiving or spreading false accounts of it. In regard to work it should be understood that the men even in their own locations are learning to become labourers and to spare the women. The earth used to be turned only by the hoe, and the hoe was used by the women. Ploughs are now quite common among the Kafirs, and the ploughing is done by men.
There is no system of divorce; but a man may repudiate
