XX NOTES ON LIFE OF THE AFRICAN NATIVE 199 
joke green in so-called comic weekly papers. On 
such occasions, the mother, bringing a wide 
experience to bear on the subject, will probably 
tell her daughter not to be silly, and, ere long, the 
young couple have made friends and discovered 
that a lover’s quarrel merely means the renewal of 
love. Should the difference be of a serious nature 
the husband will probably divorce his wife, but after 
such an event, she does not live as a woman with a 
lurid past. There is always another husband 
waiting for her, and the fact of her being a divorcee 
does not cast the slightest reflection on her 
eligibility for remarriage. 
The native woman’s appearance, apart from the 
facial aspect which may be displeasing to the eye of 
the white man, is certainly prepossessing, for the 
exercise of her household duties, of grinding food, of 
carrying water and working in the shamba, 
develops her to physical perfection. She is, more¬ 
over, if she has adopted the Mahometan faith—and 
most of the natives of Eastern and Central Africa 
are rapidly becoming followers of the Prophet— 
scrupulously clean as to her person, washing her body 
once or twice a day and always before retiring. 
Like her white sister, she takes great care of her 
appearance : her hair and skin she keeps soft and in 
perfect condition with the application of a little oil, 
usually the ufuta, which is odourless and so readily 
