Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/130

 With the Moors of Senegambia conjugal sales are effected in nearly the same manner; however, the girl has a right to refuse, but on condition of renouncing marriage for ever, on pain of becoming the slave of her first suitor in the case of an attempt to marry her to another. This right of refusal, limited as it is, already constitutes a notable degree of progress which does not always exist in much more civilised countries. We must place by the side of this some other customs in force here and there in this region of Central Africa, confining ourselves to the Sahara and to where the population is strongly mixed with Berber blood. It is to be remembered that in nearly all Berber countries the subjection of women is or has been a little less severe.

At Sackatoo the daughter is generally consulted by her parents as a matter of form only, for she never refuses. In the same district the young people first obtain a mutual consent, and then that of their parents. Among rich people the husband settles on his future wife a dowry consisting of female slaves, sculptured calabashes filled with millet, dourra, and rice, of cloth, bracelets, toilet articles, of stones for grinding the grain, mortars for pounding it, etc. All these presents are borne in great pomp, on the heads of female slaves, to the husband's house when the wife enters it for the first time.

At Kouranko the young girls are often sold by their parents as dearly as possible to rich old men. They are forced to submit, but, once widows, they resume their liberty and recoup themselves by choosing at will a young husband, on whom they lavish their care and attentions. Now we shall find that in many civilisations relatively advanced, widowhood even does not gratify the woman with a liberty of which she is never thought worthy.

At Wowow and at Boussa the emancipation of woman is markedly greater. It is no longer the father, it is the grandmother who gives or refuses her grand-daughter, and if the grandmother is dead, the girl is free to act as she likes. This fact, if correct, is infinitely more curious than all the others, and it ought to rejoice the sociologists full