word, but the customary one to use for touching women, and it is exceedingly expensive and a constant source of danger to the most respectable of men, the demands made on its account being exorbitant: sometimes so exorbitant that I have known of several men who, in order to save their family from ruin—for if their own private property were insufficient to meet it the family property would be liable for the balance—have given themselves up as pawn-slaves to their accusers.
There is but one check on this evil of frivolous and false accusation, and that is that when there have been many cases of it in a district, the cult of the Law God of that region gets a high moral fit on and comes down on that district and eats the adultery. I need not say that this is to the private benefit of no layman in the district, for notoriously it is an expensive thing to have the Law God down, and a thing every district tries to avoid. There is undoubtedly great evil in this law, which presses harder on private and family property than anything else, harder even than accusations of witchcraft; but it safeguards the women, enabling them to go to and fro about the forest paths, and in the villages and market places at home, and far from home, without fear of molestation or insult, bar that which they get up amongst themselves.
The methods employed in enforcing the payment of a debt are appeal to the village headman or village elders; or, after giving warning, the seizure of property belonging to the debtor if possible, or if not, that of any other person belonging to his village will do. This procedure usually leads to palaver, and the elders decide whether the amount seized is equal to the debt or whether it is excessive; if excessive the excess has to be returned, and there is also the appeal to the Law Society. In the regions of the Benin
