. Under the crescent, and among the kraals; a study of Methodism in Africa. she has a market value, differing invarious parts of the country, of cloth, brasswire, chickens, goats or oxen, the birth of adaughter is not mourned among the people ofthe kraals. Her father looks forward to theday when by her sale the family revenues willbe increased. This buying of wives constitutesthe only wadding ceremony. Festivities theremay be to celebrate the event by the friendsof the bride in the kraal which she leaves,or in that to which she goes. The wife-buyingcustom has been in vogue forever and a day,an
. Under the crescent, and among the kraals; a study of Methodism in Africa. she has a market value, differing invarious parts of the country, of cloth, brasswire, chickens, goats or oxen, the birth of adaughter is not mourned among the people ofthe kraals. Her father looks forward to theday when by her sale the family revenues willbe increased. This buying of wives constitutesthe only wadding ceremony. Festivities theremay be to celebrate the event by the friendsof the bride in the kraal which she leaves,or in that to which she goes. The wife-buyingcustom has been in vogue forever and a day,and in reality is about the only part of thenuptial arrangement which gives any sort ofpermanency to the marriage contract. If the girl who has been purchased from hermen folks, possibly before she was born, objectsto her prospective husband, she sometimesrefuses to go. In this case, as may be supposed,force is used. The girl will usually succumbwhen witch is threatened, although one ofour missionaries states that she has seen anunwilling bride dragged like an animal from. AND AMONG THE KRAALS her kraal, by the husband, who for the purposehad fastened about her neck a twisted cordmade from the bark of the baobab tree. The trousseau of the bride is very simple,so simple that it scarcely affords a basis fordescription. A loin-cloth of skin or cottonfabric, a few bracelets of copper wire, her headshaved in a fantastic fashion, with some bluebeads by way of ornament — and the brideis dressed. The missionaries grow eloquent over thebeauty, suppleness and grace of carriage ofthe lithe young body of the little black shake their heads sadly when they tellof its frequent cruel disfigurement by tattooing,or the insertion under the satin skin of bitsof charcoal or other foreign substance whichproduce certain welt-like patterns. They assure us, too, that the girls who cometo our schools straight from the native kraals,unclad and, because of their pagan ignorance,devoid of m
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmissionsafrica, booky
