194 Seven Years in Central Africa. [Jan. 
stition. The king has a long iron chain, which he uses for 
punishing minor offenders. To this they are bound by the neck, 
perhaps ten or twelve at a time, and are sent out to his fields to 
work — a very sensible arrangement, I think, and much better than 
the cruel flogging so common in Africa. 
October is the hoeing time, and it is a pleasure to see everyone 
turning out to the fields. The men indeed, so far as I can judge, 
do a large share of the work ; and the husbands tell me that after 
all their hard day's work, it is dangerous to return home in the 
evening without a heavy log of wood to keep up the night fire. 
WASTE OF CORN BY BREWING. 
One would suppose that there is an abundance of food all the 
year round, but it is not so. The prodigal waste of corn in 
the dry season in brewing beer passes description. They make 
beer of the strongest kind, filling large bark vessels, holding 
as much as twenty or thirty gallons. It is free to all comers, and 
drinking is kept up night and day in the yard until the vessels 
are emptied ; and thus in two or three days the fruit of weeks of 
toil in hoeing, and months of weeding and watching, has vanished 
like smoke. 
A dull, sleepy state, rather than levity and quarrelling, seems 
to be the effect of over-drinking this heavy beer. I have only 
seen one man who had any appearance of being a sotted 
drunkard, in spite of the amount of drink consumed. I suppose 
this is because it is always taken fresh. 
POLYGAMY. 
The cruel raiding on other tribes which is kept up, in which 
many of the men are killed and the women captured, has brought 
into the Garenganze an immense number of women, so that the 
proportion of women to men is very unequal; consequently 
* polygamy is carried on to a shameful extent. 
Marriages are made, not by purchase exactly, as in Zululand ; 
neither do the wife and her children continue to be the property 
of her brothers, as among the Ovimbundu tribes, but a present is 
made to the father of the bride, who forthwith disposes of his 
daughter; she, however, may leave her husband at any time, if 
she cares to do so. The case may then be brought to the chief, 
