PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE 267 



for a girl of only five years old may be married and 

 cohabit with a youth who is much older : at the age 

 of nine it is likely she will be. 1 In fact, on the 

 Tanganyika plateau and in north-eastern Rhodesia 

 Nyassaland and Portuguese Zambezia, it is a common 

 custom for girls to be married and living with their 

 husbands before puberty. 2 In the Transvaal the 

 smallest Basuto children practise coition in secret ; 

 boys give the girls beads brass wire and other trifles 

 as hire. 3 Of the people about Delagoa Bay, probably 

 Baronga, Captain W. F. W. Owen reported in 1823 

 that both sexes during youth appeared to be without 

 restraint, commencing their intercourse before their 

 tenth year. 4 Hottentot girls were married not seldom 

 in their eighth or ninth year, Bushman girls still 

 younger. The latter are sometimes mothers at twelve 

 or even ten years of age. 6 



1 Macdonald, Africana, i. 125, 146; Johnston, Brit. Cent. Afr. 

 410. The latter gives details of the rites, which are not unlike 

 those of the Azimba except that they are performed on a batch of 

 girls, whereas from the account cited above it would seem that the 

 Azimba rites are performed on the girls individually as they arrive 

 at maturity. He states the age of the Yao girl as from eight to 

 eleven : at any rate it is before puberty. He implies that they are 

 not yet married, but Mr. Macdonald's testimony is express. 



2 Decle, 293; Capt. C. H. Stigand, /. A. I. xxxvii. 121. 



3 H. Grtitzner, Zeits. f. Ethnol. ix. Verhandl. 83. 



4 Rec. S. E. Africa, ii. 478. More than sixty years earlier the 

 medical officer of a Dutch vessel wrecked on the same coast had 

 reported that young girls of eleven and twelve were usually already 

 lovers and were reckoned marriageable. They had, therefore, 

 doubtless passed through the puberty ceremonies. They often bore 

 children at twelve or thirteen and ceased by the time they were 

 thirty (Jacob Francken, Id. vi. 496). Herero girls are married 

 not ololer than twelve ; but here again it is probable that puberty 

 has been attained (Fritsch, 235). 



6 Ploss, op. dL i. 397, citing vaguely Damberger for the former 

 and Burcheil for the latter. 



