bes? "The women," he says of the Ba-Kongo, "have little regard for
their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the
jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the
sexes." These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a
white man's mistress:

"Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy
among themselves, they are far from displaying anything
but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept
the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or
in consideration of some small payment. Unmarried girls
they are more chary of offering, as their value in the
market is greater; but it may be truly said that among
these people womanly chastity is unknown and a woman's
honor is measured by the price she costs."

These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of
the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which
ennoble love. Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line,
we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love. One day, the
author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the shore of the Pool,
where there was a family with two marriageable daughters. The father

"was most anxious I should become his son-in-law,
'moyennant' several 'longs' of cloth. Seeing my
hesitation, he mistook it for scorn and hastened to
point out the manifold charms of his girls, whilst
these damsels waxed hotly indignant at my coldness.
Then another inspiration seized their father--perhaps I
liked a maturer style of beauty, and his wife, by no
means an uncomely person, was dragged forward while her
husband explained with the most expressive gestures,
putting his outspread hands before his eyes and
affecting to look another way, that, again with the
simple intermediary of a little cloth, he would remain
perfectly unconscious of whatever amatory passages
might occur between us."

Evidently the poetry of love had not drifted down as far as the Pool.
Let us therefore see what Johnston has to say of the Upper Congo
(423):

"Husbands are fond of their own wives, _as well as of those
of other people_." "Marriage is _a mere question of
purchase_, and is attended by no rejoicings or special
ceremony. A man procures _as many wives as possible_, partly
because they labor for him and also becau