The reader will have noticed that Rassam’s account of the duration and even tenour of these alliances does not agree with the comments made by Harris. Stern observed that the wedded pair “may, perhaps, become attached to each other and live in peace and conjugal bliss; or, as it frequently happens, they may become disgusted with each other after the lapse of a brief period and separate.”[230] Parkyns wrote:—“The civil marriage may be dissolved on the shortest notice and for the most trifling reasons. Parties have only to express their wish to separate, and a division of property and children takes place. The boys, if there be any, usually go to the father, and the girls to the mother. This having been done, the parties are at liberty to contract a second marriage as soon as they please. It is not an uncommon thing for a man thus separated from his wife to maintain her in a house near his own, furnish her with the necessary means of subsistence for herself and family, and continue apparently in perfect friendship with her, while at the same time he takes another bride in her place.”[231] The custom of entering into civil contracts of this kind is of old standing; for Lobo remarked, “A husband that doth not like his wife may easily find means to make the marriage void; and, what is worse, may dismiss the second wife with less difficulty than he took her, and return to the first; so that marriages in this country are only for a term of years, and last no longer than both parties are pleased with each other; which is one instance how far distant these people are from the purity of the primitive believers, which they pretend to have preserved with so great strictness. The marriages are, in short, no more than bargains, made with this proviso that when any discontent shall arise on either side, they may separate, and marry whom they please, each taking back what they brought with them.”[232] According to Mr. Vivian, provision is sometimes made at the time of the secular marriage for the event of divorce—“a certain sum is agreed upon for payment by the husband. My friend, the coffee-planter at Harrar, had to promise to pay £10 to his little Galla wife if ever he sent her away, but that was considered an exceptionally heavy fee.”[233]