WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
are magnificent in form, extremely vigorous and agile, and able to walk thirty miles in a day. They are almost entirely naked, save for the adornment of a few bead-bands. Their status is considerably better than that of the Masai.
Mrs. Sheldon boldly interrogated the chieftain Mireali as to his conjugal preferences. "I asked Mireali, 'Do you not love one wife better than another?' 'Oh, I like them all, but the new one is the best for to-day; in a week I shall go back to the old, the big wife, because she knows me better than the others,' he quaintly responded." Do not errant husbands all the world over frequently return to "the old wife"? Mireali's reply provides a subject for reflection upon the alleged universal inconstancy of men.
The Mang'anja are one of our subject-races of the Central African Protectorate. They have been closely studied by Miss Alice Werner, who has made valuable contributions to ethnology and primitive folk-lore.[1] Their country is watered by the Shire River, which flows out of Lake Nyasa at the southern end. Miss Werner states that Livingstone in 1859 found the Mang'anja tribe "gentle, friendly, and clever
- ↑ See three articles, "Our Subject Races," The Reformer, Vol. I., 1898.
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