MARRIAGE CUSTOMS 141 



first child born, a girl being considered of less value 

 than a boy. The payments among the Can' consist of 

 cattle, sheep, hoes, spears perhaps, and sometimes other 

 useful articles. The final payments are often not com- 

 pleted until years after the marriage takes place, and 

 the bridegroom is considered fair prey by all the bride's 

 relations. This results in endless disputes ; payments 

 made are often repudiated by the recipient ; the amount 

 agreed upon is constantly matter for argument, and 

 argument ends in fighting, raids on one another, and 

 sometimes a long-drawn-out feud. When asked to 

 settle a dispute, one takes it for granted that the ques- 

 tion is one of marriage payments, unless specially 

 informed otherwise. 



Wives may also be acquired in other ways than by 

 the normal method of purchase. Big chiefs have many 

 more wives than they actually marry themselves, and 

 these are bequeathed to their sons after them, along 

 with the other property. Sometimes it may happen 

 that a younger son inherits a wife much older than 

 himself, in which case he may arrange with his brother 

 to exchange for a younger woman, the elder brother 

 then marrying the older woman. One of the most 

 important Gan' chiefs, by name Ogwok, had a great 

 number of wives of all ages ; I was told that there 

 were at least eighty, and I doubt if he knew himself 

 how many children he had. He was constantly 

 acquiring more wives, being very wealthy in cattle, 

 but most of these were for his sons, who were naturally 

 numerous, and many of them already grown up. In 

 some districts girls are betrothed in infancy by the 

 parents in order to secure the cattle or goats at once ; 

 if the child dies there is, of course, unlimited litiga- 



