In New Caledonia, where the stage of the most brutal savagery is past, where the wife is no longer carried off as in Australia, but bought from her legal owners, the dissolution of the conjugal union is still ill-regulated. The man can chase away or repudiate his wife. The couple can also part by mutual agreement, the children following sometimes the mother and sometimes the father; nothing is uniform.[1] But the purchase of the woman protects her already somewhat against murder. As she represents a capital, the husband often hesitates to kill her, or even to drive her away.
The Hottentots of the Damara tribe have on this point similar customs to the New Caledonians. They do not hesitate to send away the wives of whom they are tired, and whom they can replace.[2] In Caffraria the husbands have also every right, without exception, over the wives they have bought.[3] In middle Africa, which is much more civilised, divorce and repudiation are rather less simple, and often give place to restitutions or indemnities.
With the Bongos, in case of divorce, the father must give back a part of the utensils or fire-arms for which he had ceded his daughter. He is even forced to a total restitution, if the husband keeps the children while repudiating the wife. In the last case there is evidently an idea of indemnifying the husband for the charge he undertakes, and this view of the matter is not uncommon in Africa.[4] Among the Bongos marriage is considered as a simple commercial transaction; and it is the same in the whole of Central Africa, especially among the Soulimas, where the women have the power of leaving their husbands to unite themselves to another man, on the sole condition of returning to their husband-proprietor the sum that he has paid to purchase them from their parents. However, this rare and singular liberty is taken from them if they commit adultery. But even in this last case they are treated with relative mildness.[5] As we have previously seen, the same custom is observed among the
