did wrong, when he would beat her he would not hear (one) who entreats for her.  We do not want him; let him go.  This gentleman who gave up the deer, he is our son-in-law; because, our daughter, when she does wrong, when we come to pacify him, he will listen to us.  Although he were in great anger, when he sees us, his anger will cease.  He is our good son-in-law, whom we have chosen.”

SUICIDES

According to Livingstone, in Angola suicide is sometimes committed by a girl if it is predicted to her that she will never have any children, which would be a great disgrace.  A writer in the Globus (Vol. 69, p. 358) sums up the observations of the medical missionary, G. Liengme, on suicides among the peoples of Africa.  The most frequent cause is a family quarrel.  Sometimes a girl commits suicide rather than marry a man whom she detests, “whereas on the other hand suicide from unhappy love seems to be unknown.”  In another number of the Globus (70:  100), however, I find mention of a negro who killed himself because he could not get the girl he wanted.  This, of course, does not of itself suffice to prove the existence of true love, for we know that lust may be as maddening and as obstinate as love itself; moreover, as we shall see in the chapter on American Indians, suicide does not argue strong feelings, but a weak intellect.  Savages are apt to kill themselves, as we shall see, on the slightest and most trivial provocation.

POETIC LOVE ON THE CONGO

In his entertaining book on the Congo, H.H.  Johnston says (423) of the races living along the upper part of that river:  “They are decidedly amorous in disposition, but there is a certain poetry in their feelings which ennobles their love above the mere sexual lust of the negro.”  If this is true, it is one of the most important discoveries ever made by an African explorer, one on which we should expect the author to dwell at great length.  What does he tell us about the Congo tribes?  “The women,” he says of the Ba-Kongo, “have little regard for their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the sexes.”  These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a white man’s mistress: 

“Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy among themselves, they are far from displaying anything but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or in consideration of some small payment.  Unmarried girls they are more chary of offering, as their value in the market is greater; but it may be truly said that among these people womanly chastity is unknown and a woman’s honor is measured by the price she costs.”

These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which ennoble love.  Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line, we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love.  One day, the author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the shore of the Pool, where there was a family with two marriageable daughters.  The father