If we now leave the degraded and licentious Kaffirs, going northward in Eastern Africa, into the region of the lakes—­Nyassa, Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyanza—­embracing British Central, German East, and British East Africa, we are doomed to disappointment if we expect to find conditions more favorable to the growth of refined romantic or conjugal love.  We shall not only discover no evidence of what is vaguely called Platonic love, but we shall find men ignoring even Plato’s injunction (Laws, VIII., 840) that they should not be lower than beasts, which do not mate till they have reached the age of maturity.  H.H.  Johnston, in his recent work on British Central Africa, gives some startling revelations of aboriginal depravity.  As these regions have been known a few years only, the universality of this depravity disproves most emphatically the ridiculous notion that savages are naturally pure in their conduct and owe their degradation to intercourse with corrupt white men.  Johnston (409) says: 

“A medical missionary who was at work for some time on the west coast of Lake Nyassa gave me information regarding the depravity prevalent among the young boys in the Atonga tribe of a character not even to be described in obscure Latin.  These statements might be applied with almost equal exactitude to boys and girls in many other parts of Africa.  As regards the little girls, over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, chastity before puberty is an unknown condition....  Before a girl becomes a woman (that is to say, before she is able to conceive), it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about five years of age.”

Girls are often betrothed at birth, or even before, and when four or five years old are placed at the mercy of the degraded husbands.  Capture is another method of getting a wife, and Johnston’s description of this custom indicates that individual preference is as weak as we have found it among Kaffirs: 

“The women as a rule make no very great resistance on these occasions.  It is almost like playing a game.  A woman is surprised as she goes to get water at the stream, or when she is on her way to or from the plantation.  The man has only got to show her she is cornered and that escape is not easy or pleasant and she submits to be carried off.  Of course there are cases where the woman takes the first opportunity of running back to her first husband if her captor treats her badly, and again she may be really attached to her first husband and make every effort to return to him for that reason.  But as a general rule they seem to accept very cheerfully these abrupt changes in their matrimonial existence.”

In a footnote he adds: 

“The Rev. Duff Macdonald, a competent authority on Yao manners and customs, says in his book Africana:  ’I was told ... that a native man would not pass a solitary woman, and that her refusal of him would be so contrary to custom that he might kill her.’  Of course this would apply only to females that are not engaged.”

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