"With a large number of tribes, inheritance is based on maternity. Paternity is immaterial. Brothers and sisters are only the children of one mother. A man does not bequeath his property to his children, but to the children of his sister, that is to say, to his nephews and nieces, as his nearest demonstrable blood relatives. A chief of the Way people explained to me in horrible English: "My sister and I are certainly blood relatives, consequently her son is my heir; when I die, he will be the king of my town." "And your father?" I inquired. "I don't know what that means, 'my father,'" answered he. Upon my putting to him the question whether he had no children, rolling on the ground with laughter, he answered that, with them, men have no children, only women. "I can assure you," our informant goes on to write, "that even the heir of King Bell in Cameroon _is the King's nephew, and not one of his sons_. The so-called children of King Bell, several of whom are now going through training in German cities, are merely children of his wives, _whose fathers are unknown_; one of them I might, possibly, claim for myself." What say the adversaries of the theory of descent in the female line to this sketch drawn from the immediate present? Our informant is a man with eyes open, who probed things to the very bottom. How many of those who live among these semi-savage races, do as much? Hence the wild accounts about the "immorality" of the natives. Furthermore, there come to our notice the memorials of the Imperial Government, submitted to the Reichstag on the German colonies (Session of 1894-95). In the memorial on the Southwestern territory of Africa there occurs this passage, p. 239: "Without their advice--the oldest and wealthiest--he (chief of the tribe in principal village) can not render the slightest decision, and not the men only, _but quite often the women also_, even the servants, _express their opinion_." In the report of the Marshall Islands, p. 254 of the memorial, it runs thus: "The ruling power over all the islands of the Marshall group never rested in the hands of a single chieftain.... _Seeing, however, that no female member of this class (the Irody) is alive, and only the mother conveys nobility and rank to the child, the Irodies dies out with their chieftain._" The expression used, and the descriptions made, by reporters betray what an utter blank are to them the conditions that they refer to: they can not find their bearings among them.