Ch. viii. different Parts of Africa. 153 



evident that the want of people in this barren 

 spot arises solely from the want of provisions, and 

 that, if each man had four wives, the number of 

 people could not be permanently increased by 

 it. 



In Arabia Felix, according to Bruce, where 

 every sort of provision is exceedingly cheap, 

 where the fruits of the ground, the general food of 

 man, are produced spontaneously, the support of 

 a number of wives costs no more than that of so 

 many slaves or servants. Their food is the same, 

 and a blue cotton shirt, a habit common to them 

 all, is not more chargeable for the one than for 

 the other. The consequence is, he says, that 

 celibacy in women is prevented, and the number 

 of people increased in a fourfold ratio by poly- 

 gamy, to what it is in those countries that are 

 monogamous.* And yet, notwithstanding this 

 fourfold increase, it does not appear that any part 

 of Arabia is really very populous. 



The effect of polygamy in increasing the number 

 of married women and preventing celibacy is be- 

 yond dispute; but how far this may tend to in- 

 crease the actual population is a very different 

 consideration. It may perhaps continue to press 

 the population harder against the limits of the 

 food ; but the squalid and hopeless poverty which 

 this occasions is by no means favourable to in- 

 dustry; and in a climate in which there appears 

 to be many predisposing causes of sickness, it is 



* Uruce, vol. i. c. xi. p. 281. 



