ne that a girl is sold by her father in the same manner, and with
the same authority, with which he would dispose of a cow." Those who
knew the Kaffirs most intimately agree with Shooter; the Rev. W.C.
Holden, _e.g._, who writes in his elaborate work, _The Past and Future
of the Kaffir Races_ (189-211) that "it is common for the youngest,
the healthiest, ... the handsomest girls to be sold to old men who
perhaps have already half-a-dozen concubines," and whom the work of
these wives has made rich enough to buy another. A girl is in many
instances "compelled by torture to accept the man she hates. The whole
is as purely a business transaction as the bartering of an ox or
buying a horse." From Dugmore's _Laws and Customs_ he cites the
following: "It sometimes occurs that the entreaties of the daughter
prevail over the avarice of the father; but such cases, the Kaffirs
admit, are rare ... the highest bidder usually gains the prize."
Holden adds that when a girl is obstreperous "they seize her by main
strength, and drag her on the ground, as I have repeatedly seen;" and
in his chapter on polygamy he gives the most harrowing details of the
various cruelties practised on the poor girls who do not wish to be
sold like cows.

That Kaffir girls "have been known to propose to a man," as Darwin
says, does not indicate that they have a choice, any more than the
fact that they "not rarely run away with a favored lover." They might
propose to a hundred men and not have their choice; and as for the
elopement, that in itself shows they have no liberty of choice; for if
they had they would not be obliged to run away. Finally, how could
Darwin reconcile his attitude with the remark of C. Hamilton, cited by
himself, that with the Kaffirs "the chiefs generally have the pick of
the women for many miles round, and are most persevering in
establishing or confirming their privilege"?

I have discussed this case "in detail" in order to show to what
desperate straits a hopeless theory may reduce a great thinker. To
suppose that in this "utterly barbarous tribe" the looks of the race
can be gradually improved by the women accepting only those males who
"excite or charm them most" is simply grotesque. Nor is Darwin much
happier with his other cases. When he wrote that "Among the degraded
Bushmen of Africa" (citing Burchell) "'when a girl has grown up to
womanhood without having been betrothed, _which, however, does not
often happen_, her lover m