The marriage relation, of course, dominates all customs and is the foundation of the whole social structure. With the Africans love is not so closely linked with sex as among most modern races. Friendship is deemed nobler than romantic love. This of course is due to the inequality of the sexes; woman is not regarded as fit for companionship with men. A wife is expected to love her own people more than her husband. A man loves his brothers and his friends at least as much as his wife; his children he loves far more, and his mother he loves most of all. Indeed, his love of his mother is the deepest emotion of his heart and his best moral quality. The African young and old thinks he has fully justified the most violent assault upon another when he says: “He cursed my mother.” Any uncomplimentary reflection more or less serious is a “curse.” A wife is bought with a price and is part of a man’s wealth. A man’s wealth is always reckoned by the number of his wives. The chief of the town is the man who has the most wives. But most men have only one wife and some have none, because they cannot procure a dowry. The size of the dowry differs in different tribes. Among the Fang it is enormous, considering their very primitive condition. The following dowry was paid by a Fang near the coast: ten goats, five sheep, five guns, twenty trade-boxes (plain wooden chests of imported material), one hundred heads of tobacco, ten hats, ten looking-glasses, five blankets, five pairs of trousers, two dozen plates, fifty dollars’ worth of calico, fifty dollars’ worth of rum, one chair (with one leg missing) and one cat. In addition to such a dowry a man is required to make frequent presents to his wife’s relations, who may be expected to arrive at any time, and in any number, for an indefinite visit. If he should fail in this they will induce his wife to run away and return to her town, and it will cost him many presents and perhaps a war to get her back again. A dowry is often kept intact so as to do service repeatedly. A man is fortunate if he have one or several sisters; for with the dowry which he procures for them he will get himself as many wives. Children are frequently betrothed to each other by their parents. A girl thus betrothed is taken to her husband’s town and raised by his mother. Little girls, even infants, are sometimes betrothed to old men. I knew of an instance where a child was betrothed before it was born, the dowry being kept intact so that it could be returned in case the child should not be a girl. The frequent betrothal of little girls is partly due to the fact that less dowry is paid for a child than for “a whole woman,” as the Fang would say.