These and other requirements may be good for France, but in Africa they are puerile nonsense. Moreover, these legal bonds are very hard to break; and that were well enough if only the moral bonds were strengthened thereby, but they are not, and in the case of marital infidelity the law binds only the innocent. For instance two of the very best women in Gaboon, or in West Africa for that matter, were thus bound to husbands who deserted them. One of those men took six other wives in utter disregard of the legal marriage, but that outraged woman could not get a divorce from him without a difficult and expensive process of law; nor, being a Christian, was she willing to marry without a divorce. We could not therefore advise, still less insist, that the Christians be married by the state, though of course we did not advise to the contrary. And without the legal marriage we were not allowed to perform the religious ceremony. I performed a few such ceremonies for those who had already been married by the state official. On one occasion the young couple had decided to be married with a ring. But I knew nothing of their intention, and I was surprised when the groom, after the ceremony was entirely ended, produced the ring and asked me what he was supposed to do with it. The bride on that occasion was dressed in a Mother Hubbard of bright blue calico decorated with white lobsters. But I officiated at another marriage in which the bride was beautifully attired, and in good taste that would have done credit to any white woman. As the natives objected to the legal form of marriage, and we could not conscientiously urge it upon them, there was no recognized or satisfactory form. Of course there are heathen ceremonies, but some of them are drunken orgies which the Christian conscience cannot allow; and others are so silly that the civilized natives would regard with abhorrence any suggestion of their observance. It is said that in some of the tribes far east of us the bride and groom are required to climb two young saplings, which are then swayed back and forth until their heads knock together, whereby the marriage is constituted. One wonders what the form for divorce would be like! The want of a fixed form is very unfortunate. For it is only in such a chaotic period of social transition that we learn the moral value of the so much derided forms and ceremonies, and that without them the marriage tie becomes so loose that it is practically abandoned by many. Gradually it came to be recognized that the payment of the dowry constituted the marriage. For there must be something to differentiate marriage from unlawful relations. This served, though poorly, until the enlightened Christian conscience pronounced against the dowry, and the best people voluntarily refused to accept it and abandoned the custom. Since that time there is no distinct ceremony among the Christian natives at Gaboon, which is deplorable.