PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



It would be irrelevant here to enumerate their corre- 

 lative rights and duties. One, however, of such rights 

 is that of the nephew in certain contingencies to inherit 

 his uncle's widows. This right he is accustomed to 

 anticipate whenever he chooses. He calls them wives 

 and they call him husband. He is entitled to amuse 

 himself with any of them as a betrothed lover. When 

 he visits his uncle he deposits his sleeping-mat in the 

 hut of the wife he prefers, and stays with her while he 

 remains at the kraal. 1 Such conduct as this does not 

 come within the Ronga definition of adultery. We 

 can hardly go wrong in believing, though M. Junod is 

 silent on the point, that the hospitality which lends a 

 wife to any other guest is equally outside it. If so, 

 Francken's description is hardly exaggerated. I have 

 already exposed at sufficient length the condition of 

 sexual morality among the Basuto and some of their 

 neighbours ; 2 if anything, these tribes are more licen- 

 tious than the Baronga. A missionary of great ex- 

 perience, writing of the Kaffir tribes of the south as 

 well as the Basuto, but without specifying more closely, 

 says : " Adultery is common, and frequently a woman 

 allures with the knowledge of her husband, as to him 



1 Junod, 77. The term malume, maternal uncle, includes a much 

 wider circle of relatives than we are accustomed to associate with it. 

 Among the Mashuna, when an old man has several young wives, a 

 son or younger brother (to whom they would fall after his death) 

 frequently anticipates that event by taking and using them in his 

 lifetime. But this conduct is not viewed favourably by the husband 

 (S. A. Native Affairs Com. iv. 80). On the other hand, compare stories 

 of the matrilineal Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands in which the 

 maternal uncle expressly puts his wife at his nephew's disposal 

 (Jesup Exped. x. 604, 746). 



2 Supra vol. i. p. 316. Cf. Endemann, Zeits. f. Ethnol. vi. 39; 

 Grutzner, Id. x. 82 ; H. E. Mabille, Journ. Afr. Soc. v. 245, 365; 

 Fritsch, 95. 



