[144] Ignorant sentimentalists who have often argued that the absence of illegitimate offspring argues moral purity will do well to ponder what Thomson says on page 580, and compare with it the remarks of the Rev. J. Macdonald, who lived twelve years among the tribes between Cape Colony and Natal, regarding their use of herbs. (Journal Anthrop.  Soc., XIX., 264.) See also Johnston (413).

[145] To what almost incredible lengths sentimental defenders of savages will go, may be seen in an editorial article with which the London Daily News of August 4, 1887, honored my first book.  I was informed therein that “savages are not strangers to love in the most delicate and noble form of the passion....  The wrong conclusion must not be drawn from Monteiro’s remark, ’I have never seen a negro put his arm around a negro’s waist.’  It is the uneducated classes who may be seen to exhibit in the parks those harmless endearments which negroes have too much good taste to practise before the public.”  To one who knows the African savage as he is, such an assertion is worth a whole volume of Punch.

[146] Westermarck (358), as usual, accepts Johnston’s statement about poetic love on the Congo as gospel truth, without examining it critically.

[147] Bleek credits these tales to Schoen’s Grammar of the Hausa Language, Schlenker’s Collection of Temne Traditions, and Koelle’s African Native Literature, where the original Bornu text may be found.

[148] Folk Lore Journal, London, 1888, 119-22.

[149] Compare this with what I said on page 340 about the behavior of girls in the New Britain Group.

[150] Revue d’Anthropologie, 1883.

[151] See an elaborate discussion of this question by the Rev. John Mathew in the Journal of the Royal Society of N.S.  Wales, Vol.  XXIII., 335-449.

[152] See, e.g., the hideous pictures of Australian women enclosed in G.W.  Earl’s The Papuans.  Spencer and Gillen’s admirable volume also contains pictures of “young women” who look twice their age.  After the age of twenty, the authors write, the face becomes wrinkled, the breasts pendulous, the whole body shrivelled.  At fifty they reach “a stage of ugliness which baffled description” (40,40).

[153] Royal Geogr.  Soc of Australasia, 1887, Vol.  V., 29.

[154] Trans.  Ethn.  Soc., New Ser., III., 248, 288; cited by Spencer, D.S., 26.

[155] He adds in a foot-note (320) “Foeminae sese per totam paene vitam prostituunt.  Apud plurimas tribus juventutem utriusque sexus sine discrimine concumbere in usu est.  Si juvenis forte indigenorum coetum quendam in castris manentem adveniat ubi quaevis sit puella innupta, mos est nocte veniente et cubantibus omnibus, illam ex loco exsurgere et juvenem accedentem cum illo per noctem manere unde in sedem propriam ante diem redit.  Cui femina est, eam amicis libenter praebet.”