The rain, which falls in torrents in the wet season, does not prevent the Bagos from attending to their affairs. Both men and women have a little mat, two feet and a half long and one foot wide, through which they pass a string which they tie round their heads, and this serves as a protection from the rain: this species of umbrella also skreens them from the sun. The women use it also to shelter their children, whom they carry constantly on their backs, from the burning heat of the sun. They take part of the strip of cotton which covers their loins to tie the child to their bodies: and this troublesome burden does not prevent them from working. Whilst they are young they shave their heads entirely. When they are taken in labour, they lie down on the ground even before a stranger, and bring forth without a groan. As soon as the child is born, they go and wash it in the river, and then resume their usual occupations, as if nothing had happened. The Bagos are accustomed to marry their children at a very early age; they are sometimes contracted at seven or eight years old. From the moment when a marriage is agreed upon, the father of the boy is obliged, if he has a daughter of his own, to exchange her for the girl who is promised to his son; if he has none, application is made to the lad’s relations, who never refuse to comply with the demand. When the young people are once engaged in the manner I have mentioned, they live in the same house, and are brought up together, with the knowledge that they are designed for one another; from that time the lad brings his intended every morning a large calabash full of palm-wine, with which his parents supply him till he is capable of making the wine himself. The children naturally live very happily together, and the marriage is not celebrated till the girl is eleven or twelve years old. Great rejoicings are made on the occasion, and an ox is killed to regale the guests, who are always very numerous. From the time that the children come together to the celebration of the marriage, the lad furnishes the relations of his future wife with two calabashes of palm-wine every day, one in the morning, the other at night. The girl, who on such occasions is given in exchange to be useful to the parents who have lost their daughter, leaves them when she is to be betrothed to go and live with her future husband; the adoption is, in fact, only as a compensation for services. Men are not obliged to find substitutes: like the Landamas, they have many wives; but they marry them after considerable intervals.