ication to the effect that when
the girl is refused, a present is usually given her "to ease her
feelings." At least that is the way Miss Colenso puts it. Wood (80)
relates a story of a Kaffir girl who persistently wooed a young chief
who did not want her; she had to be removed by force and even beaten,
but kept returning until, to save further bother, the chief bought
her.

[144] Ignorant sentimentalists who have often argued that the absence
of illegitimate offspring argues moral purity will do well to ponder
what Thomson says on page 580, and compare with it the remarks of the
Rev. J. Macdonald, who lived twelve years among the tribes between
Cape Colony and Natal, regarding their use of herbs. (_Journal
Anthrop. Soc._, XIX., 264.) See also Johnston (413).

[145] To what almost incredible lengths sentimental defenders of
savages will go, may be seen in an editorial article with which the
London _Daily News_ of August 4, 1887, honored my first book. I was
informed therein that "savages are not strangers to love in the most
delicate and noble form of the passion.... The wrong conclusion must
not be drawn from Monteiro's remark, 'I have never seen a negro put
his arm around a negro's waist.' It is the uneducated classes who may
be seen to exhibit in the parks those harmless endearments which
negroes have too much good taste to practise before the public." To
one who knows the African savage as he is, such an assertion is worth
a whole volume of _Punch_.

[146] Westermarck (358), as usual, accepts Johnston's statement about
poetic love on the Congo as gospel truth, without examining it
critically.

[147] Bleek credits these tales to Schoen's _Grammar of the Hausa
Language_, Schlenker's _Collection of Temne Traditions_, and Koelle's
_African Native Literature_, where the original Bornu text may be
found.

[148] _Folk Lore Journal_, London, 1888, 119-22.

[149] Compare this with what I said on page 340 about the behavior of
girls in the New Britain Group.

[150] _Revue d'Anthropologie,_ 1883.

[151] See an elaborate discussion of this question by the Rev. John
Mathew in the _Journal of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales,_ Vol.
XXIII., 335-449.

[152] See, _e.g._, the hideous pictures of Australian women enclosed
in G.W. Earl's _The Papuans_. Spencer and Gillen's admirable volume
also contains pictures of "young women" who look twice their age.
After the age of twenty, the authors write, the face becomes wrinkled,