Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/364

 gratitude increasing in proportion to the simplicity of their mode of living, or the farther they are removed to the north, north-east, or north-west of the Victoria Falls and the mouth of the Chobe.

Vanity is common, no doubt, to all savage races, but the Marutse-Mabunda tribes indulge in it with greater tact than the people farther south. Their moral standard is very low, but this, as I have before had occasion to remark, is the result of ignorance rather than of corruption; and I believe that instruction and good example, combined with a little gentle pressure put upon the rulers by white men, would in a very few years work a marvellous amendment; but to bring about a reformation, it must be confessed that the kings should be very different men from Sepopo. The first thing that it behoves a stranger to do is to set his face against the mulekow system. It is the proper way in which he should seek to gain respect for himself; and it is of great advantage to let the people know that no such custom is tolerated in any other country.

The system, too, by which the sovereign takes for wives any women he will, must also be broken down before any great moral improvement can be expected. They nearly always have to marry him in defiance of their own wishes, and are only free to refuse under the penalty of death; consequently they are seldom otherwise than unfaithful. Sepopo took care to expose every breach of fidelity that came to his knowledge; but the general example of the queens was so utterly bad, that even women who had been free to marry at their own choice, never held themselves bound to keep the marriage vow inviolate.