entirely suspended from the
time of accouchement until the child be completely
weaned, which seldom takes place before it is able to
run about. Hence during the whole of that period, an
illicit and clandestine intercourse with strangers is
generally kept up by both parties, to the utter
subversion of everything like attachment and connubial
bliss. Something like affection is in some instances
apparent for awhile, but it is generally of
comparatively short duration."

Fritsch (95) describes a Kaffir custom called _U'pundhlo_ which has
only lately been abolished:

"Once in awhile a troupe of young men was sent from the
principal town to the surrounding country to capture
all the unmarried girls they could get hold of and
carry them away forcibly. These girls had to serve for
awhile as concubines of strangers visiting the court.
After a few days they were allowed to go and their
places were taken by other girls captured in the same
way."

Before the Kaffirs came under the influence of civilization, this
custom gave no special offence; "and why should it?" adds Fritsch,
"since with the Kaffirs marriageable girls are morally free and their
purity seems a matter of no special significance." When boys reach the
age of puberty, he says (109), they are circumcised;

"thereupon, while they are in the transition stage between
boyhood and manhood, they are almost entirely independent of
all laws, especially in their sexual relations, so that they
are allowed to take possession with impunity of any
unmarried women they choose."

The Kaffirs also indulge in obscene dances and feasts. Warner says
(97) that at the ceremony of circumcision virtue is polluted while yet
in its embryo. "A really pure girl is unknown among the raw Kaffirs,"
writes Hol. "All demoraln sense of purity and shame is lost." While
superstition forbids the marrying of first cousins as incestuous, real
"incest in its worst forms"--between mother and sons--prevails. At the
ceremony called _Ntonjane_ the young girls "are degraded and polluted
at the very threshold of womanhood, and every spark of virtuous
feeling annihilated" (197, 207, 185).

"Immorality," says Fritsch (112),

"is too deeply rooted in African blood to make it difficult
to find an occasion for indulging in it; wherefore the
custom of celebrating puberty, harmless in