WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
subjects; but polygamy is not within the means of the mass of the people. Frequently a rich man has one chief wife and a number of secondary wives.
I am acquainted with an English lady who married a wealthy Tunisian after he had repudiated his native wife. She found the secluded life irksome, though she was surrounded with every luxury. This lady remained for a few years in the harem.
Mungo Park, one of the pioneer explorers in Africa, noted closely the marriage customs of the Moors. He refers to the stoutness of the women as constituting the ideal of feminine physical perfection.
"Corpulence and beauty appear to be terms almost synonymous. A woman, of even moderate pretensions, must be one who cannot walk without a slave under each arm to support her, and a perfect beauty is a load for a camel."
Park describes the dieting of young Moorish girls by their parents to induce extreme fatness. Kous-kous and camel's milk are literally forced down the girls' throats to produce corpulence, and to render them attractive to men.
The explorer found the Moorish women vain, loquacious, and very irritable. They were often cruel to their slaves. The women were entirely uneducated, and the lack of "mental accomplishments" was not deemed a defect.
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