the chief wife is an enormous crime. The man who has been an accomplice in it is, at the very least, sold as a slave; but adultery with less important wives can be atoned for by a large compensation.[1] As for the woman, her pecuniary value often protects her. The husband-proprietor has bought his wife, and he cares very little for the purity of her morals, since he has no scruple in making her an object of traffic;[2] therefore, whenever she is unfaithful without his permission, the consideration of the cost of purchase and of the possible profit of letting her out, often restrains his vengeful arm. He is free, however, to punish or to pardon, and sometimes the chastisement of adultery is terrible. At Bornou, for example, the guilty ones are bound hand and foot, and their heads are smashed by being struck together.[3] At Kaarta, says Mungo Park, the two guilty ones are put to death. With the Soulimas there is a singular exception to this. The adulterous woman merely has her head shaved, and she loses a privilege which is probably of Berber origin—viz., that of quitting her husband at will, simply by refunding him the amount of purchase-money he has paid for her. All the vengeance of the husband falls on the lover, and he makes him his slave.[4] At Jouida, in Dahomey, the offended husband had still the right, in 1713, of invoking judicial power in order to have his guilty wife strangled or beheaded by the public executioner.[5] Her accomplice was not spared, and sometimes, says Bosman, he was burned at a slow fire. This cruel wish to make delinquents suffer a long time is found again in Uganda, where King M'tesa caused adulterers to be dismembered, having one limb at a time cut off and thrown to the vultures, who feasted on it before the eyes of the sufferers.[6] With the Ashantees, the husband, as sovereign justiciary, can either kill his wife, or marry her to a slave, or cut off her nose, according to his pleasure.[7]
- ↑ Du Chaillu, Afrique équatoriale, pp. 67, 435.
- ↑ Raffenel, Nouv. Voy. aux pays des Nègres, t. I^{er.} p. 402.
- ↑ Denham and Clapperton, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xxvii. p. 437.
- ↑ Id., ibid. t. xxviii. p. 106.
- ↑ Démeunier, Mœurs des Différents Peuples, t. I^{er.} p. 223.
- ↑ Speke, Voy. to the Sources of the Nile, p. 343.
- ↑ Bowdich, English Mission to the Ashantees.
