before they are hatched, but the Kaffir seems to perform that premature calculation in more ways than one. The reader will understand that these minute and complicated ceremonies are not always observed in precisely the same manner. In many cases, especially when the Kaffirs have lived for any length of time under the protection of white men, there is very little, if any ceremony; the chief rites being the arrangement with the girl’s owner or father, the delivery of the cattle, and the transfer of the purchased girl to the kraal of her husband. Moreover, it is very difficult for white men to be present at Kaffir ceremonies, and in many cases the Kaffirs will pretend that there is no ceremony at all, in order to put their interrogators off the track. The foregoing account is, however, a tolerably full description of the ceremonies that are, or have been, practised by the great Zulu tribe. A marriage thus made is considered quite as binding as any ceremony among ourselves, and the Kaffir may not put away his wife except for causes that are considered valid by the councillors of the tribe. Infidelity is, of course, punished by instant dismissal of the unfaithful wife, if not by her death, the latter fate invariably befalling the erring wife of a chief. As for the other culprit, the aggrieved husband has him at his mercy, and sometimes puts him to death, but sometimes commutes that punishment for a heavy fine. Constant and systematic disobedience is also accepted as a valid cause of divorce, and so is incorrigible idleness. The process of reasoning is, that the husband has bought the woman in order to perform certain tasks for him. If she refuses to perform them through disobedience, or omits to perform them through idleness, it is clear that he has paid his money for a worthless article, and is therefore entitled to return her on the hands of the vendor, and to receive back a fair proportion of the sum which he has paid. Sometimes she thinks herself ill treated, and betakes herself to the kraal of her father. In this case, the father can keep her by paying back the cattle which he has received for her; and if there should be any children, the husband retains them as hostages until the cattle have been delivered. He then transfers them to the mother, to whom they rightly belong.