Nevertheless, unauthorised adultery is cruelly punished throughout Africa; but fear is powerless to ensure to the negro husbands the purely commercial fidelity they exact from their wives, and therefore, in order to correct feminine morals, they have recourse in certain parts to fantastic methods--to the _Mumbo Jumbo_ which Mungo Park describes.[356] Strangely attired and unrecognisable, a singular personage, doubtless a sorcerer, appears in the evening after being called for by frightful howlings in the woods, and first goes to the spot where the inhabitants are accustomed to assemble to talk at their ease. This coming is the signal for songs and dances, which last into the middle of the night. Then the _Mumbo Jumbo_ designates the guilty or indocile woman. The latter is immediately seized, stripped, bound to a stake, and vigorously beaten by the _Mumbo_ himself, amid the acclamations and laughter of the assembly, and especially of the other women. In all negro Africa the husbands are generally strangers to the jealousy of honour which exists among the intelligent husbands of civilised countries. They do not care for moral fidelity, based on affection and free choice. The Kaffir woman, Schouter tells us, is the ox of her husband. A Kaffir said one day, speaking of his wife, “I have bought her, therefore it is her duty to work.” “The negro,” relates another traveller (Monteiro), “knows neither love, affection, nor jealousy. During the many years that I have spent in Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for a woman--put his arms around her, give or receive a caress, denoting some degree of affection or love on one side or the other.... They have no word in their language to signify love or affection.”[357] A French traveller says also of the Malagasies, “Modesty and jealousy are two sentiments very little developed among the Malagasies of both sexes and all ranks. They push licence very far in their manners, but quite unconsciously.”[358] Throughout black Africa, indeed, marriage does not exist, at least in the sense we attach to the word. It is not a civil institution, much less a sacrament; it is a bargain, delivering the woman to the mercy of the buyer. Here and there, however, we see dawnings of legal marriage--that is to say, a contract sanctioned by civil authority. Among the Bongos of the upper Nile, for example, a man who wishes to procure a certain woman generally applies to the chief or to some dignitary, who enforces his demand.[359]