There are, however, even in savage life, circumstances which compel certain persons to live unmarried for a longer or shorter time. When a wife has to be bought, a man must of course have some fortune before he is able to marry. Thus, as regards the Zulus, Mr. Eyles writes to me that “young men who are without cattle have often to wait many years before getting married.”[840] When Major-General Campbell asked some of the Kandhs why they remained single, they replied that they did so because wives were too expensive.[841] Among the Munda Kols and Hos, in consequence of the high prices of brides, are to be found “what are probably not known to exist in other parts of India, respectable elderly maidens.”[842] In the New Britain Group, too, according to Mr. Romilly, the purchase sum is never fixed at too low a price, hence “it constantly happens that the intended husband is middle-aged before he can marry.”[843] Similar statements are made in a good many books of travels.[844] Polygyny, in connection with slavery and the unequal distribution of property, acts in the same direction. In Makin, one of the Kingsmill Islands, a great number of young men were unmarried owing to the majority of the women being monopolized by the wealthy and powerful.[845] Among the Bakongo, according to Mr. Ingham, as also among the Australians,[846] polygyny causes celibacy among the poorer and younger men; and Dr. Sims says the like of the Bateke, Mr. Cousins of the Kafirs, Mr. Radfield of the inhabitants of Lifu. Among the Kutchin Indians, according to Hardisty, there are but few young men who have wives—unless they can content themselves with some old cast-off widow—on account of all the chiefs, medicine men, and those who possess rank acquired by property having two, three, or more wives.[847] For the same reason many men of the lower classes of the Waganda are obliged to remain single, in spite of the large surplus of women.[848] In Micronesia, also, it is common for the poorer class and the slaves to be doomed to perpetual celibacy.[849] Among the Thlinkets, a slave cannot acquire property, nor marry, except by consent of his master, which is rarely given;[850] and in the Soudan the case seems to be the same.[851]