Wild Kaffir Life and Wild Kaffir Intelligence. 295 



claim against her parents for cow-restitution ; but matters are 

 held to be in some way changed when she has bestowed female 

 offspring* upon her husband. In some instances a family of 

 girls confers a measure of freedom and independence upon the 

 mother, because the value of the cows, price or deposit, is thus 

 restored. At any rate the women are looked upon as pos- 

 sessing material and substantial value in a household, because 

 they bring girls, who in due time turn into cows; and because 

 they perform hard and productive drudgery. The children of 

 any particular wife speak in common of all the other wives of 

 their paternal parent as ''''mothers;" and, as a general rule, 

 there is a surprising amount of harmony maintained in the 

 household under the circumstances. According to the old and 

 time-honoured custom of the Kaffirs, the father's property in 

 his daughters was so absolute and complete, that his sole will 

 determined all matrimonial arrangements, and he possessed, 

 and not unfrequently exercised, the right of punishing a refrac- 

 tory child who refused to obey his commands with death. 

 Since the subjection of the Kaffir chiefs to British supremacy 

 and rule, all coercion of girls to an unacceptable marriage has 

 been generally forbidden, and in any case where an appeal is 

 made against parental authority upon this ground, the magis- 

 trates discountenance, and even punish, its exercise. It is the 

 intention of the colonial government, at the earliest possible 

 opportunity, to introduce some arrangement which shall make 

 a full and clear declaration of a woman's personal consent in- 

 dispensable to the legality of a native marriage. In the mean- 

 time two very important alterations in the old Kaffir practice 

 have already been brought about. Every marriage now con- 

 summated is held to be irrevocable and final, so far as the 

 parents of the woman are concerned ; and a widow is now free 

 to marry any one that pleases her without reference to the 

 opinion or will of her natural guardian. These important modi- 

 fications have been made by the Lieutenant- Go verner, acting in 

 his capacity of supreme chief, and have received the general 

 assent of the natives on the ground that they admit them to be 

 just and reasonable. It is obvious that some caution and judg- 

 ment is required in the introduction of changes that are directly 

 aimed at the root of a practice which is intimately bound up 

 with the customs, habits, ideas, and laws of a race, and which 

 the people believe to have been created with them. 



Mr. Crawfurd considers the negro to be a very unmanage- 

 able and unpromising piece of humanity. He remarks of him 

 that he has no literature, and no architecture ; that he cannot 

 tame elephants; that his religion is nothing but witchcraft, his 

 wars merely the incursions of savages, and his government only 

 a brutalized despotism. Without at present meddling with the 



