198 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. 



his principal care is to see that his wives do not 

 make love to other women's husbands perhaps the 

 most difficult of all the tasks he has ever undertaken, 

 and one in which, I can assure the reader, he 

 generally fails. 



Among the natives of East Central Africa, the 

 status of a woman varies according to whether she 

 is a wife or merely a slave. Though the husband is 

 lord and master, let not the reader infer that he 

 treats his wife inhumanly, or that the little amenities 

 which characterize the union of civilized men and 

 women are lacking from the married lives of 

 natives. At worst, a negro is more or less a 

 mentally undeveloped man : elemental feelings such 

 as love of wife, children and parents, of fraternity 

 and of friendship are his as well as ours, and, as we 

 know, the varnish of civilization does not always 

 tend to strengthen these basic factors of human 

 character. Among them, just as among ourselves, 

 a woman, if she has a grievance, may have recourse 

 to the law rude as that law in many instances is. 

 If a man maltreats his wife, she can always complain 

 to her relatives, who either settle the matter with 

 the husband or bring it for justice before the 

 headman of the village. If the quarrel is merely in 

 the nature of a tiff, the wife may run away to her 

 mother, but there is no budding humorist to 

 discover the funny side of such an act and keep the 



