Therefore the parents of these ill-fated girls had no option in the matter. If he wanted them he would take them, probably murdering their parents, and adding their cattle to his own vast herds. By voluntarily offering them they might possibly gain his good graces, and there might be a chance that they would escape the fate that had befallen so many of their predecessors in the royal favor. These strange effects of despotism are by no means confined to Southern Africa, but are found among more civilized people than the Kaffirs. We all remember the opening story of the “Arabian Nights,” which furnishes the thread on which all the stories are strung. How a king found that his wife was unworthy of her position, and how he immediately rushed to the conclusion that such unworthiness was not the fault of an individual, but a quality inherent in the sex. How he reduced his principle to practice by marrying a new wife every evening, and cutting off her head next morning, until his purpose was arrested by the ingenious narrator of the tales, who originated the practice now prevalent in periodicals, namely, always leaving off unexpectedly in an interesting part of the story. This extraordinary proceeding on the part of an Oriental monarch is told with a perfect absence of comment, and neither the narrator nor the hearer displays any signs that such a line of conduct was strange, or even culpable. The subjects who were called upon to supply such a succession of wives certainly grumbled, but they continued to supply them, and evidently had no idea that their monarch’s orders could be disobeyed. The effect of polygamy among the wives themselves is rather curious. In the first place, they are accustomed to the idea, and have never been led to expect that they would bear sole rule in the house. Indeed, none of them would entertain such an idea, because the very fact that a man possessed only one wife would derogate from his dignity, and consequently from her own. There is another reason for the institution of polygamy, namely, the division of labor. Like all savages, the Kaffir man never condescends to perform manual labor, all real work falling to the lot of the women. As to any work that requires bodily exertion, the Kaffir never dreams of undertaking it. He would not even lift a basket of rice on the head of his favorite wife, but would sit on the ground and allow some woman to do it. One of my friends, when rather new to Kaffirland, happened to look into a hut, and there saw a stalwart Kaffir sitting and smoking his pipe, while the women were hard at work in the sun, building huts, carrying timber, and performing all kinds of severe labor. Struck with a natural indignation at such behavior, he told the smoker to get up and work like a man. This idea was too much even for the native politeness of the Kaffir, who burst into a laugh at so absurd a notion. “_Women_ work,” said he, “_men_ sit in the house and smoke.”