The Kikuyu, like nearly all other African tribes, are polygamous, and the general rule seems to be that any ordinary individual may have three or four wives, though, as marriage is simply a question of paying so much for the woman, the number is apt to vary with the man’s wealth, some of the bigger chiefs having as many as twenty or thirty. They do not, of course, regard women in the same way that we do, but look upon them more in the light of slaves, the value of a wife being reckoned at about thirty sheep. The women have to do all the work of the family and house, the man himself doing practically nothing. They build the huts, cultivate the shambas, and do all the field work, though at certain times of the year when new ground has to be cleared for cultivation the men condescend to take a share in the work. Each wife has her own separate hut, where she lives with her family, and, if her husband is a big chief, he may have a hut for his own individual use, but, as a rule, he resides with his different wives alternately. They have very large families, and the children begin to take their share of the work at a very early age—the little girl of three years of age relieving her mother of the care of the baby of one year, and, as they grow older, their share in the work increases in proportion. The very young boys have their share in the work too, and may be seen at a very early age tending the herds of cattle, sheep, and goats. This practice, prevalent almost throughout Africa, of making the woman support the family, while the man does little but loaf or fight, is at the root of the often openly expressed desire of the (so-called) Christian natives that the Church should allow polygamy among her African converts—a desire which has been quite as strongly expressed by the “civilized” and educated natives on the West Coast as among the more primitive tribes of the East and the interior.