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 one wife, chiefs generally buy numbers. The despots of Dahomey in West Africa, for instance, filled their houses with hundreds of women, who were obliged not only to amuse these kings during their lifetime, but also to follow them in death. When such an autocrat was assembled to his ancestors, his body was deposited in a large cave. But in order that he should not travel alone through eternity, his wives as well as all the members of his court were led into the cave and provided with food for several days, whereupon the entrance of the cave was closed and the occupants were left to their fate.



If among the aborigines a man is too poor to buy a wife, he generally tries to steal one. But as he must not do so within his own clan, as he would trespass upon the property rights of his fellow-men, nothing remains but to kidnap a girl of some neighboring tribe. So he lurks around the villages till some day a girl, while gathering berries or edible roots,