“Although they have a plurality of wives, which they also obtain by purchase, there is still love in all their marriages, and courtship among them is a very formal and, in some respects, a rather punctilious affair.  When a young Bushman falls in love, he sends his sister to ask permission to pay his addresses; with becoming modesty the girl holds off in a playful, yet not scornful or repulsive manner if she likes him.  The young man next sends his sister with a spear, or some other trifling article, which she leaves at the door of the girl’s home.  If this be not returned within the three or four days allowed for consideration, the Bushman takes it for granted that he is accepted, and gathering a number of his friends, he makes a grand hunt, generally killing an elephant or some other large animal and bringing the whole of the flesh to his intended father-in-law.  The family now riot in an abundant supply....  After this the couple are proclaimed husband and wife, and the man goes to live with his father-in-law for a couple of winters, killing game, and always laying the produce of the chase at his feet as a mark of respect, duty, and gratitude.”

It would take considerable ingenuity to condense into an equal number of lines a greater amount of ignorance and naivete than this passage includes.  And yet a number of anthropologists have accepted this passage serenely as expert evidence that there is love in all the marriages of the lowest of African races.  Peschel was misled by it; Westermarck triumphantly puts it at the head of his cases intended to prove that “even very rude savages may have conjugal affection;” Moll meekly accepts it as a fact (Lib.  Sex., Bd.  I., Pt. 2, 403); and it seems to have made an impression on Katzel, and even on Fritsch.  If these writers had taken the trouble to examine Chapman’s qualifications for serving as a witness in anthropological questions, they would have saved themselves the humiliation of being thus duped.  His very assertion that there is love in all Bushman marriages ought to have shown them what an untrustworthy witness he is; for a more reckless and absurd statement surely was never penned by any globe-trotter.  There is not now, and there never has been, a people among whom love could be found in all marriages, or half the marriages.  In another place (I., 43) Chapman gives still more striking evidence of his unfitness to serve as a witness.  Speaking of the family of a Bamanwato chief, he says: 

“I was not aware of this practice of early marriages until the wife of an old man I had engaged here to accompany us, a child of about eight years of age, was pointed out to me, and in my ignorance I laughed outright, until my interpreter explained the matrimonial usages of their people.”

Chapman’s own editor was tempted by this exhibition of ignorance to write the following footnote:  “The author seems not to have been aware that such early marriages are common among the Hindoos.”  He might have added “and among most of the lower races.”