The people of the village were a hard set of quarrelsome-looking fellows. The women were not beautiful, indeed they were very ugly; and even King Mbango’s head-wife was far from being a belle. She was a tall woman; her teeth were filed to a point; her hair was anointed profusely with palm-oil; her face was all tattooed; and on each side of her cheek, a little below the eye, there were two round spots of flesh of the size of a quarter of a dollar. They had succeeded in raising the flesh, and it must have required a good deal of skill. On her chest any amount of fantastical tattooing could be seen; even her back was not free from this ornamentation. Such is the faithful picture of Mbango’s head-wife, whose name I have forgotten. She wore several brass anklets, and also several bracelets. King Mbango had a score of wives besides her, but she was the first woman he had married; hence she was the Queen—the foremost of them all. When Mbango married a new wife, she gave her advice and told her how she must love Mbango, how she must obey him, how laboriously she must cultivate the soil in order to bring food to her husband, and how she must often fish in order to feed her lord well. If she does all this, the king will say, “This wife really loves me.” But if she does not, beware! If she is lazy, the lash of whips made from the hide of the hippopotamus, or of the manatee, will remind her of her duties, and of the love she owes to her husband. [Sidenote: _AN AFRICAN BETROTHAL._] Do not think for a moment that women in that far-off country of which I speak to you choose their husbands. Nothing of the sort! When a girl is born among the Bakalai, while she is still a child she is often betrothed, and now and then she goes to the village where her future husband lives. Her mother or her father will take her there, and after a while she comes back to her home, and this continues until she is finally given away. As she grows older she visits her intended husband less frequently, while he, on the other hand, comes oftener to the village of her parents.