w among many tribes, that a young girl shall never be
without a guardian. When the relatives are favorably impressed with
the suitor, they are at great pains to sound his praise in the
presence of the girl; who, after a while, consents to see him. The
news is conveyed to him by a friend or relative of the girl. The
suitor takes a bath, rubs his body with palm-oil, dons his best armor,
and with beating heart and proud stride hastens to the presence of the
fastidious charmer. She does not speak. He sits down, rises, turns
around, runs, and goes through many exercises to show her that he is
sound and healthy. The girl retires, and the anxious suitor receives
the warm congratulations of the spectators on his noble bearing. The
fair lady conveys her assent to the waiting lover, and the village
rings with shouts of gladness. Next come the preliminary matters
before the wedding. Marriage among most African tribes is a coetaneous
contract. The bride is delivered when the price is paid by the
bridegroom. No goods, no wife. Then follow the wedding and feasting,
firing of guns, blowing of horns, music, and dancing.[78]

Polygamy is almost universal in Africa, and poor woman is the greater
sufferer from the accursed system. It is not enough that she is
drained of her beauty and strength by the savage passions of man: she
is the merest abject slave everywhere. The young women are beautiful,
but it is only for a brief season: it soon passes like the fragile
rose into the ashes of premature old age. In Dahomey she is a soldier;
in Kaffir-land she tends the herds, and builds houses; and in Congo
without her industry man would starve. Everywhere man's cruel hand is
against her. Everywhere she is the slave of his unholy passions.[79]

It is a mistaken notion that has obtained for many years, that the
Negro in Africa is physically the most loathsome of all mankind. True,
the Negro has been deformed by degradation and abuse; but this is not
his normal condition. We have seen native Africans who were jet black,
woolly-haired, and yet possessing fine teeth, beautiful features,
tall, graceful, and athletic.

"In reference to the status of the Africans among the
nations of the earth, we have seen nothing to justify the
notion that they are of a different 'breed' or 'species'
from the most civilized. The African is a man with every
attribute of human kind. Centuries of barbarism have had
the same deteriorating e