I am surprised at the great number of married women. One knows their status from those sacred tails. The Kavirondo girls marry very early. They are often betrothed at the age of six years; but in such case the girl stays with her parents for five or six years afterward. The parents sell their girls for a price, a good wife being purchasable for forty hoes, twenty goats, and a cow. In the case of an early betrothal the suitor pays down part of the fixed sum and the rest in installments until all is paid. If the father refuses to give up the girl when the time comes for marriage, the payments having been made, the suitor organizes a band of his friends, captures her, and carries her home. A man usually takes his wife from a different village from that in which he lives. When he comes with his band to the bride’s village, her gentlemen friends often resist the invasion and fight the suitor’s party with sticks. At such times the girl screams, but I understand that she usually allows herself to be captured. [Illustration: The witch doctor’s life is safe only so long as the people believe he has power to break up spells cast upon men or cattle by evil spirits. Most of them come to their end by violence.] [Illustration: The British provide for the men who uphold the banner of empire in East Africa homes that are not only clean but attractive. They have succeeded far beyond any other nationality as administrators over the millions of primitive blacks.] [Illustration: The Masai, long noted as warriors and cattlemen, live in huts made of branches woven together and plastered with mud, so that their homes look from a distance like so many bake-ovens.] I hear that old maids are not popular and that the average Kavirondo girl is just as anxious to be married as are our maidens at home. Indeed, she is usually so uneasy that, if she does not get a bid in the ordinary way, she will pick out a man and arrange to have herself offered to him at a reduced rate. There are plenty of plump Kavirondo maidens now on the bargain counter. Another queer marriage custom here affects a man’s sister-in-law. The man who gets the eldest girl in a family is supposed to have the refusal of all the younger ones as they come to marriageable age. The polygamous Kavirondo may thus have several sisters among his wives. One would suppose that these girls might be rather loose in their morals. On the contrary, I am told that they rank much better in this regard than the maidens of Uganda in the province adjoining, nearly all of whom wear clothing. Virtue stands high here, and infractions of its laws are always punished, though less severely now than in the past. Divorces are not common, but a man can get rid of his wives if he will. One curious custom decrees that if a husband and wife have a quarrel, and she leaves the hut and he shuts the door after her, that action alone is equivalent to a divorce and the woman goes back to her own people at once.