100 A NATURALIST IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



Of course, some amount of immorality exists, as in 

 the most puritanical districts at home, but at least a 

 stand is made for the sanctity of marriage among these 

 Kafirs by the prohibition of unmarried girls bearing 

 children. It is very questionable whether these men lead 

 more sensual lives with their few wives than they would 

 do if they practised monogamy, and there are many 

 occasions when the woman is avoided altogether, 

 especially for some time after child-birth. At the stage 

 of culture to which the Kafir has at present arrived, 

 polygamy is a useful institution ; it is a protection to 

 the women, and an incentive to the industry and enter- 

 prise of the men. We are too apt to judge other social 

 arrangements, especially when belonging to what we 

 are pleased to call inferior races, by our own standard of 

 civilization, which is often simply the subordination of 

 the greatest good to the fewest number. Certainly, 

 among these Magwamba Kafirs, woman only holds the 

 place of a valued chattel (the women always kneel when 

 handing anything to a man) ; but even then her lot is 

 not worse, but probably better, than that of the well- 

 abused drudge and slave of our own brickfields. 



The Magwambas, or " knob-noses," so-called from 

 having their noses originally ornamented with notches 

 or scars, were the tribe or clan of the Bantu race with 

 which I was principally thrown in contact. They 

 entered Zoutpansberg about twenty years previously 

 from the other side of the Limpopo, under the control or 

 chieftainship of a Portuguese named Joan Albasini, and 

 they still style themselves " path openers." They are 

 mostly refugees from Umzila's country, since joined by 

 other refugees from the surrounding districts, and are 

 now the most orderly and law-abiding inhabitants of the 

 Speloiiken. At the death of Albasini they looked to 

 the Transvaal Government as their head, and afterwards 

 elected the government native commissioner as their 

 chief, a proceeding they probably now regard in the 

 same light as the early Jews did their insistance on 

 having a king. 



At the time of my visit to the Spelonken these 



