a rare monkey, but since the introduction of beads into the country they have been used as a substitute, and a handful of small blue beads is now the usual offering; when this has been accepted, the girl is at liberty to speak to the man, and is held to have pledged herself to him as his wife. There is an entire absence of those hideous orgies which characterize both the betrothal and marriage ceremonies among other South African tribes, and nothing transpires beyond this simple form before the marriage is deemed to be settled. The next step is for the parents every night to vacate their own hut and retire to another in the courtyard, leaving their usual abode for a week or two at the service of the newly-wedded pair. Every morning the bridegroom goes out to his work, and the parents reoccupy their proper dwelling for the day. Meanwhile the young man continues to acknowledge every favour by repeated gifts of beads; even the ablutions of the morning are recompensed in this way; but at the end of a fortmight or thereabouts, the son-in-law brings the father-in-law either four couples of goats, or eight rows (about 2 lbs.) of beads, whereupon they set to work to build a hut—or two if there were not one already in the possession of the bridegroom—which henceforward he makes his home.
Any breach of conjugal fidelity was, I understood, extremely rare; on the part of the husband indeed it was quite unheard of; the Manansas in this respect being superior to the more cultivated Marutse, amongst whom the demoralizing system of “mulekow” drives the wives into unfaithfulness even against their will.
