In no case can a woman, even if she possess many male slaves, have more than one husband. If a wife with a male slave marry a free husband, her male slave is discarded; and if again she should fancy another man, she must devise some reason for separating from this new husband. There can easily be found cases where it could be said to a woman, “thou hast had five husbands,” although they would not be contemporaneous. The husband on the other hand may have as many wives as he can secure. Very generally the head of a village, instead of appropriating for himself every woman that he might have, gives over certain for his younger brothers or male slaves. A Yao Chief is content with ten to twenty wives. Some of the Magololo have 170. I have been often asked how a man can _maintain_ the scores, and even hundreds of wives that Africans are allowed to have. The man finds no difficulty. The more wives he has, the richer he is. It is his wives that _maintain him_. They do all his ploughing, milling, cooking, &c. (51). They may be viewed as superior servants who combine all the capacities of male servants and female servants in Britain—who do all his work and ask no wages. 60.—PECULIAR POSITION OF A FREE WIFE. In the case of a free wife the husband is not responsible for her debts, if he were so, it would go hard with her, as she might be sold off to pay a “legal action”. When a woman gets into trouble the accuser does not go to the husband at all, but to the surety (48). Suppose a woman is accused of theft, it is no matter for her husband. The accuser goes with some evidence before the surety. If the evidence be exceedingly little, no notice is taken, but if the accuser has a chance of incriminating the woman, the surety will call her, and she must respond, whether the husband be willing or not. If she confess to the charge, her surety pays the fine. If she deny the charge, she will appeal to the poisoned cup (_mwai_). If she drink it and survive, she is innocent, and receives a fine which is paid, not to the husband, but to the surety. When the plaintiff has to pay three slaves, the surety will retain two of them, and out of kindness give one over to his relative whose life has been endangered by the ordeal; thus the accused woman has a kind of solatium. If she die, her guilt is proved: the plaintiff is entitled to restitution of the stolen goods or their value, and a fine as well. All this is paid by the surety; the husband has nothing to do in the matter except to observe the customary mourning (33) when she dies, but of course the unfortunate woman that dies of the poison is only entitled to mangled funeral rites (107). _Family Relationships._