In practice, the number of wives varies from one to, in the case of a chief, perhaps twenty. The Makololo and Angoni chiefs used to delight in showing their consequence by huge harems of over a hundred women, and the latter, at least, were in the habit of demanding additional wives, from time to time, from their Anyanja subjects, making them send up a selection of their daughters, as they sent their sons to herd the chief’s cattle. But this custom was not followed by the indigenous tribes. Mr. Macdonald says that, ordinarily, it is a man’s ambition to have five—one free wife, and three or four slaves, who might at that time (some thirty years ago) be bought for two buckskins apiece in the Angoni country. A number of the Anyanja I knew on the other side of the Shiré had two, some, I think, only one. If a man has more than one free wife, he spends his time between their different villages, since each of them will remain at her home. His slave wives are brought to his village, or rather to that of his chief wife, where he settled on his marriage. They are supposed to be under her orders and do most of the work; she is sometimes a stern and even cruel taskmistress, but often they get on very amicably together. She usually calls them her ‘younger sisters.’ If a man has a second free wife, it is, as a rule, because he has inherited her from his elder brother according to Bantu custom. He also inherits the wives of his maternal uncle, if the latter has no younger brother living at the time of his death. Wives may be captured in a raid, in which case there are no particular formalities about the marriage. Some of my Anyanja friends at Ntumbi had Yao wives who must have been obtained in this way, but appeared to have settled down quite happily. ‘Another way’—to complete the enumeration—is when a young man’s master or guardian (for he may, even if free, be under the tutelage of a real or nominal elder brother) provides him with a wife. We have spoken of the ‘sureties’ or ‘sponsors,’ who take part in arranging a marriage. They, especially the wife’s, are of great importance in married life. They are usually the maternal uncles or elder brothers of the parties, and the woman’s represents her in all transactions of any moment.