But this consideration alone is not sufficient; and Miss Kingsley gives us the means that he employs for his further safety, as follows: “But the trader is not yet safe. There is still a hole in his armour, and this is only to be stopped up in one way, namely, by wives; for you see, although the village cannot safely kill him and take all his goods, they can still let him die safely of a disease, and take part of them, passing on sufficient stuff to the other villages to keep them quiet. Now the most prevalent disease in the African bush comes out of the cooking-pot, and so to make what goes into the cooking-pot—which is the important point, for earthen pots do not in themselves breed poison—safe and wholesome, you have got to have some one who is devoted to your health to attend to the cooking affairs; and who can do this like a wife?—one in each village of the whole of your route. I know myself one gentleman whose wives stretch over 300 miles of country, with a good wife base in a coast town as well. This system of judiciously conducted alliances gives the black trader a security nothing else can, because naturally he marries into influential families at each village, and all the wife’s relations on the mother’s side regard him as one of themselves and look after him and his interests. That security can lie in woman, especially so many women, the so-called civilized man may ironically doubt, but the security is there, and there only, and on a sound basis; for remember that the position of a travelling trader’s wife in a village is a position that gives the lady prestige, the discreet husband showing little favours to her family and friends, if she asks for them while he is with her; and then she has not got the bother of having a man always about the house, and liable to get all sorts of silly notions into his head, if she speaks to another gentleman, and then go and impart these notions to her with a cutlass, or a kassengo, as the more domestic husband, I am assured by black ladies, is prone to.”[1] Footnote 1: _Travels in West Africa_, p. 252.