For those who are not so fortunate as to inherit a dowry or to have a sister, there are two alternatives; first they may remain unmarried, with the result that they will be regarded as contemptibly poor, and will be engaged in endless palavers with all the husbands of the town; or, they may boldly steal a woman of some other town, which will cause war between the two towns, and in the end, after several or many persons have been killed, the whole town will have to pay the dowry. Sometimes a man may have an incomplete dowry and may by working earn sufficient to complete it. The following would be an ordinary dowry among the Fang living near the coast: Ten goats, five sheep, five guns, twenty trade-boxes (plain wooden chests), one hundred heads of tobacco, ten hats, ten looking-glasses, five blankets, five pairs of trousers, two dozen plates, fifty dollars’ worth of calico, fifty dollars’ worth of rum, one chair and one cat. In addition to the above he must make frequent presents to his wife’s relations, who may be expected to arrive at any time and in any number for an indefinite visit. If there is any hatred in the heart of the African man it is usually directed towards his wife’s relations. A man is all his lifetime subject to bondage by reason of his wife. A certain fellow missionary was married to another missionary. Some of the African boys, knowing that the white man had paid no dowry, expressed envious regrets at the ease with which a white man marries a wife. “All you white men have to do,” they said, “is simply to ask a woman; and the whole palaver is finished.” This also made my celibacy the more incomprehensible. When a wife dies without having borne children the husband has the right to insist that the dowry be returned. A part of it and sometimes all of it will have been spent, and the people are reluctant to make up the loss; so the request that the dowry be returned after the death of a wife nearly always leads to war, though they do not question the right of the custom. If the wife runs away either to her own or another town, the dowry paid for her must be returned, if the woman is not sent back. In nearly every case her people will find it more convenient to send her back than to restore the dowry; so their bad passions of greed and immorality are balanced the one against the other, and the large dowry serves the purpose of keeping husband and wife together. But if the woman runs away not to her own town, but to some other town, eloping with another man, her people will often prevent war between the two towns by inducing her to return. Otherwise they themselves will become involved in the war. Nearly all the wars between different communities of the same tribe begin with a “woman-palaver.”