When a man divorces a wife who has a child of tender years, the child is allowed to remain with her until he or she is about ten or twelve years of age, and then is given up to the father, but is permitted to visit the mother should she be living in a neighbouring town or district. The father has the right to kill his own child, and although the act may be strongly condemned by his neighbours and his family, yet they have no power to punish him, though it may be a clear case of murder. I may say that I never heard of a father killing his child while I lived amongst them; but the natives assured me that there had been such cases. A father, however, would not hesitate to pawn his children, or even to sell them into slavery, if he were in dire straits. As a rule they are fairly kind to their children, even to over-indulgence, for it is rarely that they punish them. Perhaps this will be the best place in which to make a few remarks on the mother-in-law. She and her son-in-law may never look on each other’s face. I have often heard a man say, “So-and-so, your mother-in-law is coming,” and the person addressed would run into my house and hide himself until his wife’s mother had gone by. They can sit at a little distance from each other, with their backs to one another, and talk over affairs when necessary. _Bokilo_ means mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, father-in-law, sister of mother-in-law, brother of father-in-law, wife of wife’s brother, and in fact any relation-in-law. _Bokilo_, the noun, is derived from _kila_ = to forbid, prohibit, taboo, and indicates that all bearing the relationship of _bokilo_ can have no intimate relationship with one another, for it is regarded as incestuous; and it is according to native ideas just as wrong for a daughter-in-law to speak or look at her husband’s father, as for the son-in-law to speak or look at his wife’s mother. Some have told me that this was to guard against all possibility of cohabitation, “For a person you never look at you never desire.” Others have said, “Well, don’t you see, my wife came from her womb.” I am strongly inclined to the opinion that the former is the real reason. I knew a case in which a man married his mother-in-law by marriage. The woman was not his wife’s mother, but his wife’s father’s wife, and as such was his mother-in-law. I had seen him avoid her many times, and it was thus evident that all the wives of the wife’s father are regarded as joint-mothers of the children, and hence mothers-in-law. His wife’s father died, and the man wanted to have one of the wives (i.e. one of his mothers-in-law) as his own wife, so he arranged with a friend to pay the marriage money and take her as his wife, then she, by that marriage, being no longer his mother-in-law, he was able to take her as his own wife. He thereupon paid the money for her and took her to his house.