For those who are not so fortunate as to inherit a dowry or to have a sister the proper thing is to steal a woman from some adjoining town. Most women are glad to be stolen and the affair is often an elopement. This will precipitate a war between the two towns. At least nine out of ten wars among the Fang begin this way. After several or many have been killed the “palaver” is settled by the whole town paying the dowry. If a man have many wives it is regarded as magnanimous for him to take little notice of infidelity. Seldom, however, does he rise to this level of magnanimity and many wives mean constant palavers. In either case it means boundless immorality. The aggrieved husband, in a case of adultery, may punish with terrible severity, if he feel so disposed. In some tribes it is punishable with death. In a tribe immediately south of the Fang the injured husband frequently cuts off the ears and even the nose of the guilty woman. In one instance that I knew of, on the Ogowè River, a man cut off his wife’s nose and lips. Among the Fang I have never seen such mutilations, but in the far interior the practice is probably not unknown. A man suspecting his wife of wrong-doing, especially after a prolonged absence from town, may upon the impulse of his own suspicion and without a shred of evidence resort to torture to compel a confession. And this recalls to my mind an occasion upon which I administered physical chastisement. I may say that there were three such occurrences during more than twice so many years, and that in each instance the occasion of my wrath was the outrageous treatment of a woman. One Sunday morning in a town named Angon Nzok, on a branch of the upper Gaboon, I was about to hold a religious service when I heard, in the other end of the town, a woman crying. For a long time she had been moaning and crying in a low tone which had escaped my attention, though I heard it. But now there followed an outburst of piteous cries. I sprang to my feet and ran quickly in the direction of the cries and to the house from which they seemed to issue, but the door was closed as if no one were within. At first I thought that I had not rightly located the sound, but I was told that a man and his wife were within the closed house, the man torturing his wife to extort a confession of unfaithfulness, and the name of the partner in the wrong. The closed door was a sign, almost sacred to the Fang, that no man must enter, but I disregarded it. The man had returned from a journey, and without the least evidence had accused the woman and had then resorted to torture to extort a confession.