In one instance this request was made of a Christian man by an intimate friend, and at the woman’s suggestion. The man in his distress appealed to me to talk the palaver with the sick man. If a man has many wives, it is regarded as magnanimous for him to take but little notice of social wrong-doing; and the result is boundless immorality. Charges of adultery are often made for the purpose of extortion. For this same purpose husbands and wives together often conspire against another person. Polygamy is the greatest obstacle to the introduction of Christianity. It is not identical with the question of African sensuality; but involves a man’s wealth, influence and reputation, all of which depend upon the number of his wives. It is the very foundation of the whole structure of African society and is as firmly rooted as their Cameroon Mountain in the African soil. Critics of missions say that the obstacle is insuperable. But we believe in a Power that can say to the mountain: “Be thou removed; and be thou cast into the sea.” And that same Power is actually removing polygamy to-day. Moreover, the critics do not seem to see or do not understand that if polygamy be an insuperable obstacle to Christianity it is also an insuperable obstacle to civilization, which they advocate. The renouncing of polygamy and putting away his wives with all the loss that it involves serves as a final test of the African’s sincerity in professing the Christian faith. The man of the parable said: “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” When at the close of a service in a native town I gave a similar invitation a man replied with a sorrowful shake of his head: “I have married _five_ wives, and cannot come.” In the later chapters of this book I shall tell of men who, notwithstanding the jeers and contempt of the people, have put away many wives and have come. Among the real negro tribes of the Soudan (for the tribes of Central and Southern Africa are not pure negroes) there is a central government and a general organization. But there is no tribal organization among the Fang or any other tribe south of the Calabar River. The village, or a group of villages close together and immediately related, is the unit and the entirety of organization; although a common language is a bond of sympathy and they might freely unite against a common foe. Their government is nearly patriarchal in form. There is a headman in each village who is usually advanced in years. But unless he has many more wives than any other man he takes counsel in all matters with the elders of the town; and there are many public discussions in which all the men have a right to advise. There is no despotism, except the despotism of custom which no chief would challenge.