This picture is not untrue to the facts. And yet some of us who have old-fashioned ideas of morality are not convinced that polygamy is thereby justified with its beastly immorality on the part of those men and of all those women who prefer not to have husbands hanging about the house with silly notions—that is to say, _moral_ notions—about the behaviour of women. And however heartrending may be the condition of those interior men and women, without tobacco and without beads, we cannot agree that their necessity justifies any such degrading practice for its relief. As for the slight excess of rubber and ivory that civilized folks obtain by this means, it may soothe the civilized breast to know that all, or nearly all, this trade produce would reach the coast in other and more legitimate ways without these middlemen, whose presence is a curse to the interior people, whose absence is a curse to their own tribe, and who are above all a curse to themselves. This demoralization of domestic life is even worse for the Mpongwe women than for their absent husbands. There is a large settlement of white men in Gaboon, most of them government officials. And because of the climate the white population is always rapidly changing. Nearly all the Mpongwe women become the mistresses of those men. And the worst of it is that instead of being deemed disgraceful this only gives them social prestige among their own people. A woman said to me one day: “Iga is so proud she won’t speak to me any more.” “Why?” I asked. “Oh, she is living with a white man now,” was the reply. The marriage tie in Gaboon has long ceased to be a “tie.” It was much more binding before the advent of the white man, and it is more binding to-day among the uncivilized Fang. The dreadful diseases that have been imported into Africa are certainly a factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe. But the subject is too unpleasant to discuss at length in this place. Again, the disregard of native institutions and the destruction of tribal authority by the foreign government tends to break down all authority and remove all moral restraints. This is more or less true in all West Africa. The native form of government among the Mpongwe is somewhat patriarchal; authority belongs to the head of the family, the head of the clan and the head of the tribe. The native reverence for the authority of these men is the saving virtue that sustains the tribe. But the chief’s authority and this reverence are destroyed together when the people see him tied up occasionally and flogged; or ruthlessly flung into prison; or his authority superseded by that of a native policeman. The kingly office goes begging for an occupant when men find that the grandeur of royalty consists in being held more or less responsible for all the misdoings of all the tribe, while, perhaps, some black mistress of a government official has more real power than the native king.