A murderer, if caught red-handed, may be killed by the friends of his victim; or they may put him in a slave-stick till slaves have been paid over for his ransom. Some of these are sometimes sacrificed to the _manes_ of the victim. If the actual slayer cannot be caught, a man from the same village may be captured and held to ransom in the same way. In some cases, no distinction is made between accidental homicide and murder; sometimes a gun which has been the cause of an accident is seized instead of the owner, and held till he pays several slaves for it. Sometimes, however, the view is taken that the man or his gun may have been bewitched, and steps are taken to find out and punish the person who has done this. The man who kills his own slave, or even his younger brother, or other ward, is not amenable to justice, but—unless he can protect himself by a charm—he is afraid of the mysterious _chirope_ which overtakes those who shed blood within the tribe. The chief, to whom he goes if he has committed such a murder, procures the charm for him from his own medicine-man, and uses it himself as well, ‘because of the blood that has been shed in his land.’ Adultery is theoretically a capital crime with most Bantu tribes; that is, the man may be (and frequently is) shot or speared by the husband; the wife is frequently let off with a warning the first time, but for a second offence either killed or divorced and sent back to her relatives, who in such a case must return whatever present was made at the marriage. Sometimes she drinks _mwavi_, and is, of course, accounted guilty if she dies. But in practice, the matter is often arranged by paying damages, or the guilty man may be sold into slavery. Still there can be no question that (where they have not been corrupted by outside influences, or their customs and institutions disorganised by war, etc.) they look on it as a very serious affair. Slave wives are more summarily dealt with, and are often either killed or sold. I have seen one ‘Angoni’ woman who had had her nose and ears cut off, but seemed to be living on in her husband’s (or master’s) family, as before,—though evidently doing most of the heavy work. But such cases are not common, except perhaps among the coast Arabs, who have large slave harems and rule them by terror.