Perhaps it is the frequency of war between towns that keeps the people within a town, or in a company, generally at peace among themselves. It is surprising how one can trust workmen or carriers or schoolboys to divide their food without quarrelling. In this respect they far surpass white workmen, or white schoolboys. Where we would expect a quarrel no quarrel occurs. And then again, just when one has declared that “Africans never quarrel,” a scandalous quarrel breaks out over some infinitesimal matter. Individuals, especially women, often have a reputation for quarrelling. Some towns are notorious. I once visited such a town, where no white man had been before. I found the stormiest people I ever met in the jungles. During the two days that I remained in the town there occurred an almost continuous succession of palavers, each of which seemed to involve the whole population of the town—men, women and children. Long after they went into their houses for the night some of them continued yelling their anger loud enough to be heard by all whom it concerned. The occasion of a general quarrel the day that I arrived was this: A certain man’s hen had laid an egg in another man’s house, and the latter man had kept the egg. The town was rent in twain over the ownership of that egg. Forcible arguments were presented on either side but without avail. Before it was settled something else had happened that required a vigorous exercise of lungs for its adjustment, and the egg palaver was laid on the table. There was not a spare moment in which to resume it before I left, and it may be undecided to this day. Even while I was preaching, a woman in the congregation, sitting immediately in front of me, continued the palaver, occasionally yelling unladylike remarks to some other woman whom she evidently supposed to be at the end of the universe. In all such quarrels there is much of bluff and bluster, but not so much anger as one might suppose. Such a quarrel, if anything should appeal to their keen sense of the ridiculous during its progress, might break up in a laugh. When two Fang women engage in a prolonged quarrel—usually sitting immediately within the door of their respective houses and cursing each other in shrill tones, heard all over the town—the people sometimes become impatient and demand that they shall come out into the street and fight. I have witnessed such a fight. They prepare for it by throwing off even the shred of clothing that they wear. They fight more like men than women—if it be true that women usually scratch and pull each other’s hair when they fight. When one of them is repeatedly thrown to the ground she confesses defeat. At least it may be said to their credit that this usually ends the matter; and the next day they may be as friendly as ever.