I was well aware, when I answered No, that the shrewd old man had routed me. The guilty men looked at one another with a relieved and peculiarly significant smile which said politely but unmistakably: “Then you are not qualified to judge us; for you know nothing about the natural hostility of wives, and we know all about it.” A man’s wives are the first to be charged with his death, even without evidence, because they are supposed to have a latent desire for it. As I have already said, much of the witchcraft of Africa is straight poison usually administered in food. Africa abounds with deadly poisons and many Africans are skillful in their use. Wives do the cooking, and so have the constant opportunity to inflict death by this powerful but invisible weapon. One often finds that one bad custom is nothing more than a pitiful attempt to correct another. And this may explain the custom of killing wives at the death of the husband. At any rate it tends to restrict a wife’s use of poison and to inspire an earnest effort to keep her husband alive. It has been estimated that, in those tribes that are beyond the restraints of foreign governments, nineteen out of twenty Africans die by violence. This accounts for the sparse population of Africa. For although the African race is prolific, and the land in most parts capable of sustaining a dense population, it is the most sparsely populated country in the world. Many of this number are killed in war, which is a chronic condition. Nothing is too trivial to occasion a war. The usual beginning, however, is the stealing of a woman by a man of another tribe or village. Following this, the people of the two villages wage an aggressive guerrilla warfare, killing each other at every opportunity, not sparing women or children. The war usually continues until on either side another woman is stolen by a third party and another war begins. Then the first war is closed: a great palaver is talked between the two parties in some neutral town; and after oceans of oratory it is usually agreed that the side that has done the most killing shall pay over to the other side a corresponding number of women and much goods, including a proper dowry for the woman first stolen. One of the first scenes that I witnessed in Africa was that in which, at the end of a war, four women were thus delivered to the enemy. The people were all gathered together when the chief announced the names of the four women. Each woman, as she heard her name, sprang from the ground with a shriek and tried to escape into the forest; but several men were on hand to catch her. She struggled until they bound her. Then the next name was called, and we heard another shriek. Finally the four women were led away, all of them crying bitterly. In the town to which they were taken they would be given as wives to certain men, and soon they would begin to make the best of the situation, would probably form new attachments and forget the old.