Life at Banza Nokki. 211 
off. The lowest orders will submit to a kind of 
marriage for four fathoms of cloth ; exactly double 
the tariff paid in Tuckey’s time (pp. 171-181) ; and 
this ratio will apply to all other articles of living. 
Amongst themselves nubile girls are not remark¬ 
ably strict; but as matrons they are rigid. The 
adulterer is now punished by a heavy fine, and, if 
he cannot pay, his death, as on many parts of the 
Southern Coast, is lawful to the husband. 
The life is regular, and society is simple and 
patriarchal, as amongst the Iroquois and Mohawks, 
or in the Shetlands two centuries ago. The only 
excitement, a fight or a slave hunt, is now become 
very rare. Yet I can hardly lay down the “ cur¬ 
riculum vitae ” as longer than fifty-five years, and 
there are few signs of great age. Merolla declares 
the women to be longer-lived than the men. Gidi 
Mavunga, who told me that the Congo Expedition 
visited their Banza when his mother was a child, 
can hardly be forty-five, as his eldest son shows, 
and yet he looks sixty. The people rise at dawn 
and, stirring up the fire, light the cachimbos or 
large clay pipes which are rarely out of their 
mouths. Tobacco (nsunza) grows everywhere 
and, when rudely cured, it is sold in ringlets or 
twisted leaves ; it is never snuffed, and the only 
chaw is the Makazo or Kola nut which grows 
all over these hills ; of these I bought 200 for 
100 coloured porcelain beads, probably paying 
