24 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



to their illegitimate children by slave girls or concu- 

 bines, to the exclusion of their issue by wives ; they 

 justify it by the fact of the former requiring their 

 assistance more than the latter, who have friends and 

 relatives to aid them. As soon as the boy can walk 

 he tends the flocks ; after the age of ten he drives the 

 cattle to pasture, and, considering himself independent 

 of his father, he plants a tobacco-plot and aspires to 

 build a hut for himself. There is not a boy " which 

 cannot earn his own meat." 



Another peculiarity of the Wanyamwezi is the posi- 

 tion of the Wahara or unmarried girls. Until puberty 

 they live in the father's house; after that period the 

 spinsters of the village, who usually number from seven 

 to a dozen, assemble together and build for themselves 

 at a distance from their homes a hut where they can 

 receive their friends without parental interference. 

 There is but one limit to community in single life : if 

 the Mhard or " maiden " be likely to become a mother, 

 her " young man " must marry her under pain of 

 mulct ; and if she die in childbirth, her father demands 

 from her lover a large fine for having taken away his 

 daughter's life. Marriage takes place when the youth 

 can afford to pay the price for a wife : it varies accord- 

 ing to circumstances from one to ten cows. The wife 

 is so far the property of the husband that he can claim 

 damages from the adulterer ; he may not, however, sell 

 her, except when in difficulties. The marriage is cele- 

 brated with the usual carouse, and the bridegroom 

 takes up his quarters in his wife's home, not under her 

 father's roof. Polygamy is the rule with the wealthy. 

 There is little community of interests and apparently a 

 lack of family affection in these tribes. The husband, 

 when returning from the coast laden with cloth, will 



