to dismiss the wife.[743] The same rule is found with the Abipones also, where the husband can repudiate his wife on the slightest pretext.[744] The conclusion to be drawn from all these facts is, that there are no more fixed rules for divorce than for marriage in savage societies. But, as the wife is more often bought or captured, it is quite natural that her owner should send her away at his pleasure. Wherever divorce is mutual, it is when the wife costs little to obtain, or where the ties of relationship are well defined between the members of her and her tribe, or her _gens_, who then think themselves bound to afford her a certain protection. II. _Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples._ These free and fragile marriages are found in societies more civilised than those of the Polynesians and the American Indians. Bruce tells us that in Abyssinia marriage is in reality only a free union, without any sanction or ceremony; couples unite, part, and re-unite as many times as they like. There are neither legitimate nor illegitimate children. In case of divorce the children are divided; the girls belong to the father, and the boys to the mother.[745] M. d’Abbadie affirms also that Abyssinian marriage is purely civil and always dissoluble; he adds that it is dotal, and co-exists, for rich men, with the concubinate.[746] It is quite certain that divorce is largely used in Abyssinia, since Bruce says he has seen a woman surrounded with seven former husbands. In Hayti, the only negro country that is civilised in European fashion, we find either preserved or instituted, by the side of legal monogamic marriage, free unions which recall the Roman concubinate. The persons thus paired are called “placed”; they suffer no contempt on this account, and their children have the same rights as those of persons legally married. There are at Hayti ten times more “placed” persons than married ones; they separate less often than the latter are divorced, and have better morals.[747] But in general the free union, or, what comes to the same thing, the power of divorce, left to the two united parties, is rare enough in countries more or less civilised. Most usually it is the husband who, even without any cause of adultery in the wife, has the right to repudiate her. It is thus, for example, at Madagascar, where, in order to repudiate his wife, a husband need simply declare his resolution to the magistrate who has received the notification of the marriage; it is only necessary for him to pay for the second time the _hasina_, or duty on marriage. When once he has declared his intention, the husband has still twelve days’ grace to retract it; but if he exceeds this delay the repudiated wife becomes her own mistress and free to marry again.[748]