Feminism in Nyasaland

I

FOR several years after my arrival in Tropical Africa, while living in the midst of natives, and fully conversant, as I imagined, with their customs and their way of thinking, my heart was filled with compassion for the hard-working and submissive black woman. ‘ What a field! ‘ I often said to myself, ‘for the vindicators of women’s rights! Oh! if I could only bring here one of those energetic lady champions! What a storm she would raise in the whole world, until she had set rolling the stone which would, in the end, bring if not entire freedom, at least relief to these poor and patient creatures!’

Pending the arrival of a militant ally, I tried my best, wherever I happened to be, to pave the way by word of mouth for a more energetic propaganda in the future; but I must confess, to my shame, that my efforts met with very little success. It is perhaps just as well, under the circumstances, that the expected militant friend has, up to date, as far as I am aware, failed to materialize.

When I tried to explain to a husband that it cannot, in fairness, be expected from the mother of a family to collect firewood in the forest, to bring water from the river, and to carry all the household goods on a journey, I was invariably met by that vacant stare which natives who cannot, or will not, understand know so well how to assume; and as to the women themselves, my discomfiture amounted to a fiasco! They had two attitudes in response to my veiled incitements to rebellion: the one was that of benevolent toleration, if not exactly approval, of my intentions rather than my words, the humoring, so to speak, of the harmless hobby of a good-natured eccentric; the other, more humiliating still, was that of boundless merriment, finding expression in peal after peal of laughter, to which the listeners gave way, and which kept on reaching me from the distance, growing fainter and fainter, as they moved away from my camp.

The native point of view is well illustrated by the following conversation which I once had with a Yao, a tribe in which every man is a born ‘sea-lawyer.’ As he was leaving his hut, and had already gone a little distance, he called back to his wife to bring him his tobacco.

I said: ‘Your wife has a lot of work to do: she cooks your food, she looks after the child, she pounds the grain, she brings firewood and water — can you not go and fetch your tobacco yourself? ‘

‘Have I not,’ he answered, ‘given her everything she possesses, clothes, and beads, and money to pay the huttax; and do I not give her money to buy food?’

‘I see,’ I replied: ‘you look upon your wife as your servant, and what you give her is her salary.’

‘But,’ said he, ‘is it not the same with the women of the white men? Does not a white man get a wife because he wants her to look after his house and his food? When he wants a new kind of pudding, he tells her, and she looks into her book, where everything about puddings is written, and then she calls the cook and tells him what to do. Is not that the same as with us? ‘

There certainly was a time when terrible acts of cruelty were perpetrated against women in Tropical Africa; but these acts were not so much the consequence of the women’s enslaved state, as of the omnipotence of the chiefs, who, when they chose, treated their male subjects as barbarously as the female ones. From the moment when British supremacy made it impossible for native potentates to indulge in the satisfaction of barbarous caprices, there was nothing to prevent the existence of native women from running its peaceful course along lines made immutable by a practice which has lasted many centuries.

Undoubtedly, the relations of native men and women to one another are based, not on an idea of inferiority of the one sex to the other, but on division of labor. If, in some tribes, like, for instance, the Wayao, the woman throws in, by way of pourboire, an outward show of extreme humility and submission, she does so, as I will show later, on an entirely noncommittal understanding, merely, I am afraid, because the cunning creature is well aware of the weak spot in the cuirass of the lord of creation.

When, in the last-named tribe’s country, I saw a woman kneel in the dust when addressing her husband or handing him anything, I could not repress a feeling of indignation with the male, for what I considered to be the outcome of insufferable arrogance on his part; nor would I believe him when he replied to my outspoken comments with the words: ‘Have I told her to kneel down? She is following her own heart.'

I subsequently found out, however, that this excuse was quite correct. In most of the Nyasaland tribes, permanent connubial life is preceded by a term of probation, which can be broken off at will by either party. When the woman has finally made up her mind to stay, she punctuates her decision by kneeling when she addresses her husband. As a rule, she will inaugurate this change in their relations by a little coup de théâtre. She will choose an occasion when chance has brought together a goodly number of people, and she sees her husband standing among them. She will then walk right up to him, kneel down before him, put some trivial question, or give some unimportant piece of information, wait for the reply in a kneeling posture, and, after this has been given, get up and join the others. By thus humbling herself, she has taken possession of her husband.

In some tribes, as, for instance, that of the Wangoni, where probation is not required, the girls will postpone kneeling until after marriage.

Not only when they talk to their husbands, or hand them anything, are the women of the Nyasa Basin expected to kneel, but also when they minister to their wants, or even when they nurse them during an illness. A common sight is a ‘beau’s’ morning ‘toilette’ at the hands of his wives. He sits crosslegged in front of a large cooking-pot filled with water, — a device for a looking-glass, — and his wives, supposing there are two of them, kneel, one on each side of him, one of them holding a small bottle of oil and a longtoothed wooden comb, and the other a knife or scissors and sometimes a flatiron to flatten the recalcitrant curls, as it is every black man’s endeavor to have as little kink in his chevelure as possible.

The Wayao, descendants of conquerors, very intelligent, and very conceited, set the fashion in British Central Africa. The neighboring tribes are gradually adopting their customs and habits, and even their tribal marks. Something similar to this was, before the war, the Anglomania which was prevalent in Europe among the better classes in all countries.

It would be a mistake to infer, from the ostentation of wifely devotion just mentioned, a particularly humble or timorous disposition on the part of the performers. The whole show is a mere conventional formality, like our surrendering of a seat in a car to a lady, or giving her precedence. Barring a few concessions to traditional custom, native women in British Central Africa enjoy to-day a liberty greater than that of most European married women. Were it not that polyandry is unknown, one might almost be tempted to compare their emancipated status with that of the women of Tibet.

Marriages between natives are essentially mariages de convenance, and sentiment rarely plays a part in them. But it is an ill wind that blows no one any good, and the great advantage connected with this materialistic attitude lies in the fact that enforced celibacy is practically nonexistent among natives. Even lepers in the early period of the disease find a mate; it happens that these, even if they are known to be afflicted with that illness, marry persons who enjoy perfect health.

No man or woman is too deformed to marry. Not long ago I saw a woman, a poor little hunchback dwarf. ‘Poor creature!’ I exclaimed; ‘she will never find a husband! ‘

‘She has been married for years,’ was the reply.

A couple of years ago, a young Ngoni came to me for medicine for a festering sore on the instep of one of his feet. I asked him how he had come by it, and was informed that it was a bite, inflicted by his first wife in a fit of jealousy, because he had taken a second one. After this act of revenge, she had run away with an Askari. I could not refrain from expressing my pity for the poor woman, who had obviously been very fond of her husband. But Joseph — such was that young bigamist’s name — could not be made to accept my point of view. He was a picture of a man, uncommonly tall and strong, and he wore war-medals besides, having been through the campaign in German East.

I met him again about a year later, and asked him how he was getting on, and if he was still happy with his second wife.

‘She has left me,’ he said; ‘she has gone to live with James.’

‘James?’ I exclaimed, ‘the man in the workshop?’

‘The same,’ he said.

Now this James is a hopeless cripple, who moves about with extraordinary nimbleness on his hands and knees. Like so many native cripples, he is a mechanical genius, and he was, at the time I am writing about, employed in the workshop on the estate of a European. ‘You do not mean to say,’I said to Joseph, ‘that your wife has deserted you, a strong, big man, to go and live with that cripple?'

‘James has got plenty money,’ was the brief reply. This, indeed, was retribution.

Nowadays, among the Wayao, the Wanyanja, and the tribes which have adopted their customs, girls are no more bought from the father with cattle or goats, and no girl is given in marriage against her consent. This is the case also among the tribes of the Livingstone Range. Chief importance is given to the expenses incurred by the husband on account of the woman, in establishing her household. These are considered as imposing upon the latter a moral liability.

A Yao once asked me if Europeans make presents to the father of their fiancée. When I told him that it is the other way, and that the father gives the daughter money for her married establishment, and that her friends give her presents, he inquired: ‘Is this because the parents of the girl are afraid that, perhaps, if they give her nothing, later, when the two have been married for some years, and a quarrel arises, the husband might say to his wife: “What! You dare quarrel with me, and yet, when I married you, you had nothing, and I gave you everything!”?’

It is strange how the ideas concerning the conduct which is expected from unmarried girls vary in different tribes. Among the Wayao, and those who have come under their influence, girls are allowed to grow up without supervision or restraint. How great is the influence, for good or evil, of the Wayao over their neighbors, may be concluded from the fact that this laxity of morals has spread even to the Wangoni, although their parent nation, the Zulu of South Africa, punishes girls who have disgraced themselves, by death through warrior ants.

The Wataweta of the Kenia Province allow their young a licence as great as that of the Wayao.

On the other hand, the Wapare of the Tanganyika province, near neighbors of the Wataweta, in order to keep their young girls out of harm’s way, were, and perhaps still are, in the habit of shutting them up for periods sometimes extending to four years, often in solitary confinement, in lofts built into the roofs of their huts! They were never allowed to go out, but were otherwise well taken care of. If, in the same tribe, a boy and girl sinned against custom, their lives were forfeited, and they were killed in the way in which, according to Moses (Numbers 25:8), Phinehas killed the Israelite, the daughter of a Prince of the Midianites.

The Elgon natives of the Kenyia province shut up all the boys, every evening, in double-story buildings, and a watch is set over them.

It is to be feared, however, that those tribes which are concerned about the proper behavior of their maidens before marriage, are not so from any appreciation, or even comprehension, of ‘ virtue’ in the white man’s sense of the word. Chastity merely increases the girl’s value as a commercial asset. That this is the case follows from the fact that it is insisted upon chiefly in those tribes where the girl is bought from the parents by the bridegroom, without being herself consulted; while it is treated as a negligible quantity where the girl’s consent is a condition of marriage.

Nothing could be simpler than the process by which, to-day, in Nyasaland, a man and a woman enter matrimony. The following account gives a good idea of how it is generally done. I asked Soliman how he got his wife.

He said: ‘I met her on the road and gave her tobacco. Shortly afterward she came in to my hut and brought ugali (porridge). I asked: “For whom is this ugali?” She replied: “It is for you.” I then asked her: “Why do you bring me ugali?” She replied: “Because I want you very much.” I said: “But you have a husband already.” She replied: “No! my husband left me a long time ago.” I said: “This is surely a lie.” She said: “ It is not a lie: go and ask my brother.” I then went and asked her brother, and he said: “She has told you the truth: her husband left her a long time ago.” I then went to my own brother [his eldest brother] and asked him if he had any objection to my courting that woman. He said he had none and so she came to live with me.’

In due time, when the two came to the conclusion that there existed no radical incompatabilité d’humeur, the preliminary arrangement became a permanent one.

What applies to the courting of grown-up women applies in an equal degree to that of girls. Their freedom of movement is absolute. They will go to a young fellow ‘on trial’ without first informing their parents, until, perhaps, one day, the father asks casually: ‘Where are you always going to, taking food-stuff with you?’ The girl then replies: ‘ I go to a young fellow whom I like very much.’ Then the swain, after having been informed by his fiancée that the father is beginning to manifest curiosity, will go to the latter and tell him that he wants his daughter; and then the father will say: ‘Go and speak with her brother.’ It is always the brother, or the uncle on the mother’s side, who is consulted as the weightiest authority; but this is not to be looked upon as a disregard of parental authority; quite the contrary, parents are considered to stand so high above their children, that to consult them in anything, or even to begin a conversation with them, would be an unthinkable piece of audacity on the children’s part.

Before the two young people agree to live with one another, there is always the same exchange of questions and answers, almost like a ritual: ‘ Have you not got another man.’ ‘No!’ ‘Surely you lie; you have another man!’ ‘No, truly; I am telling the truth.’ The brother is then called upon, for confirmation or otherwise.

If, during the term of probation, the young people discover that they cannot agree, or if the family of one of the two parties objects to the choice made, they separate. In one case, for instance, in which one of my servants wanted to marry a young girl, the latter’s family decided, after she had come to live with him, to settle in another district. Now, among the Wayao, as a general rule, the husband follows the woman and lives in her village. But in this case the bridegroom’s family, a body against whose decisions there is no appeal, declared with one accord that they did not wish him to leave the district in which they were living. So there was nothing left for the two but to separate.

I felt very sorry for them both; but when I asked Hassan, full of sympathy, if he felt very sorry that the girl was leaving him he laughed, and said: ‘Not at all!’ He was thinking, no doubt, that there are as many fish in the sea as have come out of it.

As long as the bridegroom has incurred no expenses on behalf of his lady, and as long as the relations of both have not been formally and solemnly informed of the union, the separation is not treated as being of any importance. But where all these conditions have been fulfilled, it is sure to be followed by litigation.

II

If the native woman’s conduct as a spouse, looked at from the white man’s point of view, leaves much to be desired, it must be proclaimed, on the other side, that no words of praise could even approximately do justice to her in her character as housewife and as mother.

Her thrift, her patience, her endurance, her uncomplaining and quiet cheerfulness, are the incomparable qualities against which her husband has nothing to put into the balance except official representation and the prestige of masculine strength, which, as a protection, is becoming more and more superfluous.

Long before sunrise, long before her husband, she gets up to go and fetch water from the lake or from the river. On many occasions this function is accompanied by personal danger, as, for instance, when the only watersupply is a river or a lake infested with crocodiles; or when man-eating lions happen to be about. These generally choose their victims from women who are on their way to the water or returning from it. I have known of many such casualties; yet I never heard of any woman making this a pretext for staying at home.

Other occupations fill the day, from morning till night: wood-chopping, grain-pounding and winnowing, hoeing, planting, cooking, nursing the children, fetching mud for the huts and applying it (the frames are erected by the men), besides, in some places, making pottery — an art reserved to women, some of whom are clever artists in this industry.

When one asks the men what part of the work is left for them to do, as the women do practically everything, they invariably reply: ‘Oh, but do not we get the money for the women to buy cloth with, by hiring ourselves out to Europeans? Where are the women to get money from, if we do not get it for them?’

So great is the glamour attached to money in the native mind, that a man who, by a few months’ work on a plantation or as a ‘ boy,’has earned enough to pay the hut-tax and to buy a few pieces of calico, is satisfied that he has done ample justice to his part of the contract, and that he fully deserves, for the rest of the year, his otium cum dignitate.

The adaptability of native women to their surroundings, and their equanimity under all circumstances, are remarkable. They are very like gypsies in this respect. Those who follow their husbands on a journey, with or without children, often without any necessity and only for the fun of the thing, find themselves as much at home in a grass hut erected in haste in the bush, as in their own village; and their babies are just the same.

Yet another great quality of these women is the small amount of noise which they make. All the chattering, all the loud laughing and talking is done by the men, who are engaged in incessant conversation on the most futile subjects from morning till evening, and often, when there is a moon shining, all through the night, too, as natives enjoy the invaluable faculty of being able to remain awake at will, without exercising the slightest effort. In a camp, women are scarcely ever heard, unless one of them happens to have a hysterical fit.

Black babies are as admirable as their mothers. They are simply wonderful! Nobody who has not lived in close proximity to them for some time can realize how noiseless they are. Once only in twenty-five years has a black child kept me awake during the night; and I do not know to this day what the reason was, as I arrived after dark and left before dawn, and never saw it!

When I once asked a Yao why black babies make so little noise compared with white ones, he replied: ‘The European father teaches his child to make plenty noise and to break everything it touches, because, if it does not, he thinks it is ill.’

The placidity and the contentment of native as compared with European babies is due, no doubt, to their close companionship with their mother, from whom they are as inseparable, mutatismutandis, as little kangaroos from theirs. During the first years of their life, they spend nearly all their time snugly and comfortably berthed in the kuveleka, the pouch formed by the cloth slung over their mother’s back. If they want to sleep, they sleep; when they are awake, there is always something interesting to see, or to hear, by peeping round the corner. The larder is always full, the table always laid, the perambulator always ready to start; they are kept warm by the best and most natural of warming-pans.

The facility which the native has in sleeping under all circumstances, and in all conceivable postures, must be the consequence of this existence of the child on its mother’s back where it undergoes all imaginable variations of tossing; for, whatever may be the nature of the work in which the woman is engaged, she scarcely ever puts the baby down. And the skill with which she manages to carry, besides, on her head, heavy logs of wood, or a hoe which often balances within an inch of the small passenger’s head, is both marvelous and appalling, as it also testifies to her strength of nerve. Often have I been made quite anxious by thus seeing babies, in imminent danger as I imagined, of being brained; and I have even seen native men who were affected the same way; and I have heard them call out to the women to be careful. Yet it would appear as if nothing ever happened.

I once asked a man if he remembered, in his lifetime, a baby having been injured by the load which its mother was carrying. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied at once; ‘I remember very well, a long time ago, at such and such a place.’ ‘And what happened?’ I asked; ‘did the poor child die?’ ‘Die? No!’ was the reply; ‘there was a little blood, though.’

It occurs from time to time that women have hysterical fits — fits which have the same character in tribes settled thousands of miles apart. One hears sometimes that the reason why the Chinese occasionally run amok is the snapping of the bonds of self-restraint imposed upon them by their crowded existence; the fits of black women may have the same origin. There is, however, nothing dangerous or violent about them. They consist, as a rule, in an avalanche of words, chiefly accusations and complaints, which nothing on earth except violence can stop, culminating sometimes in a headlong flight from the village into the bush, with the avowed intention to await death there. Fortunately, however, the crisis always ends before it comes to this. Husbands, when their wives are taken that way, have two alternatives: either to beat them until they stop, or to run away and keep at a distance until the hurricane has passed.

As was indicated above, among the Wayao and those tribes which their influence has penetrated, woman rules supreme in the household and in the village. I have spoken with many men who, after some hesitation, ended by admitting it. In the villages it is the women who make or mar reputations, as they did in Europe before the advent of the suffragette, and in the house the men follow their advice in almost everything. It is they who decide whether a stranger shall be allowed to settle in the village and to remain there, and whether one of the community who, for some reason or other, is making himself obnoxious, shall be given, by the men, the consilium abeundi. When the wife of a native servant desires a change, she will prevail on her husband to leave his situation, however much he may like it personally. ‘ Boys’ who have been scolded in the presence of their women invariably give notice; most thefts committed by men are due to direct or indirect instigation In their wives. Black men are extremely sensitive to ridicule, and what they fear more than anything else, is to appear ridiculous or weak before their women. The latter know this, and harp on that string with consummate virtuosity.

What gives the women of the Wayao such a hold over the men is the unique custom that, after marriage, the man follows the woman to her village, not vice versa; and if, later, the man goes to reside in another place,—as, for instance, when he finds employment on a plantation, — it seems to be left to his wife’s discretion entirely, whether she shall follow him or not. Frequently she refuses.

I once had a servant named Moses a good-natured, blear-eyed, pockmarked, flat-nosed, squat fellow, very partial to pombe, and particularly unfortunate in his dealings with the fair sex. One day he informed me that he had got a new wife (his third), and that she wanted to come and live with him. So I put at his disposal a large and comfortable hut which stood empty. But anything like the tantalizing behavior of this princess could not be imagined! For weeks she kept on sending messages announcing her impending arrival, without ever turning up. I tried, by scathing comments, to rouse poor Moses, who was daily growing more depressed, to an assertion of his authority; but he was evidently much too afraid of being deserted, to risk incurring his Dulcinea’s displeasure.

One morning, when I asked him if his bride had at last arrived, he replied, in English, which he spoke rather well: ‘No; she sent her little sister instead; did you not see that little girl who came yesterday?’ ‘Why on earth, does she send you a little girl ?' I said; ‘ why does she not come herself?’ To this he replied, in a meek and despondent tone of voice: ‘A little sister-in-law for me.’ Finally he made up his mind to give in, and left me to join her.

Just as in Europe, it frequently happens that mere boys marry women twice their age, and sometimes nearly twice their size. They make devoted husbands, as long as it lasts; but I imagine that they are rather henpecked as a rule. In one such case which I remember, the wife, a giantess, whom her boyish husband had been carrying, figuratively speaking, on his hands, at last brought matters to a head by requesting him to cook her food! This was too much, and he gave her up that very day.

Yet, such is the power of conventionality, that, if the husband’s brother, or his maternal uncle, come on a visit, the wife will at once leave the hut and sit by herself, alone and disconsolately, at some distance, until he has gone. And if one asks her why she acts in this way, she replies: ‘Ninaona haya. (I feel shy.) The visitor, if the same question was put to him, would probably say, as an explanation needing no further comment: ‘Is she not my daughter-inlaw?’

One of the chief reasons for the differences between man and wife, which incessantly occur in Nyasaland and are more frequent there than in any other part of Africa which I have visited, is the ease with which the women absent themselves from their homes for varying lengths of time. A pretext is never wanting, and is apparently always taken for granted by the confiding husband.

I have known a Ngoni woman to leave her invalid husband all alone for six weeks; and when I asked him why he consented to being thus deserted in his helpless state, he explained, with perfect equanimity, that she had followed up-country a debtor who owed her sixpence!

Native women who run short of provisions often remedy this by repairing to some village in the district where maize is reported to be abundant, and there hire themselves out to take a hand in pounding it, for remuneration in kind. This offers an opportunity for an absence of many days’ duration, during which the control of the movements of the absentee ladies by their husbands is a complicated affair, and quite out of the question when the latter are in fixed employ.

It is deplorable to have to admit that the black woman of British Central Africa, with all her admirable qualities, is sorely lacking in the one essential virtue of her sex.

With the sole exception, possibly, of the few Christian women who belong to the nucleus of bonafide converts surrounding mission stations, no native woman is capable of even faintly suspecting that her white sister’s attitude toward certain problems of life is either beautiful or reasonable.

A redeeming, although rather ludicrous feature of the question is, that Isolde is expected to make, without delay, full confession of her fault to her husband, who otherwise would die if he partook of food in company with Tristan. This is implicitly believed in by the natives of Nyasaland, and confessions of this kind are of very common occurrence.

A somewhat similar idea is the universal belief that a woman whose husband has been unfaithful will grow ill and die of her next child; or that a child at the breast will die if its father is unfaithful to the mother. All the deaths of women with child, or of a child at the breast, are attributed to this cause. Nothing, however, appears to happen nowadays to the guilty father, except that he is excluded from the family mourning ceremonies.

Open acts of revenge by an injured husband are extremely rare, but that passion may be exercised in a way which cannot be brought home to him. That this sometimes happens I more than suspect — merely from the character of the people. Also, complete indifference is often assumed, in order to procure convincing proof. But even where this has been forthcoming, the end of the whole intrigue, as a rule, so far as the general public is concerned, consists in nothing more tragic than an endless palaver between the families of the two parties, where the fine payable by the guilty person is definitely fixed.

Rarely does it happen that even the most incorrigible of flirts is dismissed by her husband, if she is otherwise of an amiable disposition. One evening I was awakened by the sound of blows and of a woman screaming. It came from the hut of a man whom I knew, the the owner of two wives, one of whom was elderly and steady, the other a wayward young gazelle, who had already twice spontaneously confessed that she had listened to the advances of a neighboring Don Juan.

I rushed to the hut; but when I arrived there, I found the husband only and the first wife; the second wife, caught listening to the blandishments of the neighbor, had, I was told, run away. As I feared that he might have seriously injured the girl, I told the man that, unless he produced her, unhurt, within a day, I should have him seized and sent before the Resident.

I waited two days, and then both appeared before me, smiling, hand in hand. They were still living together, and on the best of terms, two years later.

The absolute immorality of the women of Nyasaland, strange to say, goes along with a modesty, both of word and gesture, in both sexes, which could not be excelled in the most respectable and collet-monté community of white people. Exceptions occur only when a woman gets drunk.

The rule us to what constitutes and what destroys the respectability of a grown-up woman is a different one in almost every tribe. Where morality is practically nonexistent, as among the women of the Nyasa Basin, nothing, obviously, that a woman could do could injure her honor. Among the Wakinga of the Livingstone Range, again, a hardy race of mountaineers, women are forbidden two things: to accept money in return for their favors, and to bestow them on men not of their own race. To the latter restriction was due, before the war, the total absence of all disease — an inestimable boon, perhaps unique in the world. But whether this happy state of affairs has survived the ‘passing of the days of war’ is, alas, another question. The Masai woman, in the Nyika of what now forms the Kenyia and the Tanganyika provinces, is a model spouse; but the unwritten law of the nation imposes upon her husband the duty temporarily to surrender his house and its inhabitants to any one of the Elmorao (members of the warrior caste, who are bound to celibacy as long as they belong to it) who desires to take possession of them, and to keep away as long as he sees the latter’s long spear sticking in the ground in front of the door. This husband was an Elmoran himself before his marriage.

Ethically, there is a great resemblance between all native women, from the Juba to Capetown; but physically they are as different as white women of different nationalities; and their ideas as to the kind of ornaments best adapted to their particular style of beauty vary even more.

Most Europeans, I believe, imagine that, although a Negro woman may have a fine figure, the general type of the features is always the same, and shaped, more or less, on the lines of the traditional black woman of storybooks. No idea could be more erroneous and more unjust. People may differ as to the question whether perfect classic beauty is compatible with a black skin; but, leaving the Somali out of the question altogether, because it is not quite certain if, black though they are, one is justified in calling them Negroes, there can be no two opinions as to whether an ebony Venus of Milo — the term black, when applied to the human skin, has as many shades as the spectrum — is not occasionally met with, very much alive, indeed, among the Wagala or the Waswahili. Perfectly regular features are probably more frequent among the former of these two races than among the English, the Italians, or the Greeks. Besides, the headdress of the women of these tribes — small curls arranged on both sides of the central, longitudinal parting, and converging toward a small tuft, just above the nape of the neck — is not unlike the classic ideal.

The headdress of the Masai and the Wataweta women, where beautiful faces, although of a somewhat different type, are just as frequent as among the tribes just mentioned, is also very becoming and very striking, consisting, as it does, of leather bands forming a kind of skullcap on top, and hanging down on both sides of the face, like the curls of our grandmothers, terminating in huge, brightly polished metal discs, the whole being rather suggestive of the faces of saints on Greek icons. Unfortunately, these women shave off their eyebrows, as did the Gioconda and her contemporaries.

But neither the Swahili nor the Masai headdress has, so far, been universally adopted as a fashion; and no woman’s face in the world, were it as beautiful as that of ‘the serpent of old Nile’ herself, can with impunity support a black woolen pincushion in lieu of a chevelure.

Native women, who have not grown either self-conscious or bold by much intercourse with Europeans, often have charming manners: the low laugh, the graceful movements of the head, the subdued gestures, the total absence of affectation (which is in itself the hallmark of good breeding) — no grande dame in Europe could excel them in these; and those whom age has deprived of the charm of youth often astonish the stranger by their wisdom and their sense of humor.

It is a moment of ever-recurring surprise and wonder to me, that the very tribes in which women enjoy the greatest freedom and have most power, namely, the Wayao and the Wanyanja, are also those in which they are ugliest, and where, besides, they do their best to increase this ugliness by disfiguring themselves with their idiotic ornaments. These ‘improvements’ are threefold; about the most atrocious of the three, the flattening of the breasts, the less said the better.

The other two are called, respectively, the chipini and the pelele. Both are studs. The chipini is worn in the side of the nose, the pelele half-way between the nose and the upper lip. The chipini is one inch across, the pelele often much larger! Indian women sometimes wear a small piece of jewelry in the nose, which looks very pretty. Natives, however, can do nothing in moderation, and the enormous chipini distorts the wearer’s nostril, down and sideways, across half the cheek. It looks horrid enough when the chipini is worn; but when it has been lost, or sold, there remains nothing but the gap where it ought to be; and the impression given is that of a permanent disfigurement due to some accident.

I remember that, when I came to Nyasaland and saw for the first time a woman who had left her chipini at home, I thought she was ill, and told my attendant to ask her if I could help her in any way! Natives always avoid giving a direct reply if they can, and so the answer which I received in this case was that, ‘ perhaps ‘ there was nothing the matter with the lady’s nose.

The women themselves could probably be prevailed upon to give up wearing these horrible things; but, unfortunately, the men like them, and encourage them to wear them. A Yao, a great Don Juan, once announced to me that he intended going in search of another wife. I wished him good luck and added: ‘I hope you will find a pretty wife, one who does not wear that dreadful chipini.’

‘What!’ he exclaimed, horrified; ‘nothing at all, like a man?’

If the chipini is bad, the pelele is worse. A peculiarity of the natives of the Nyasa Basin, some Wangoni excepted, is the great distance between the nose and the upper lip; the line, besides, projects outwards at an angle from the nose, almost like a beak. It is midway between the nose and the lip that the pelele is worn, and one asks one’s self whether the length of that line is due to the wearing of the pelele through countless generations, or whether the pelele was put there to relieve its monotony. The natives have a theory to explain the invention. They say that, when a woman grows old, she loses her front teeth, and that then her upper lip, by getting into the mouth, prevents her from talking distinctly; but that the pelele keeps the lip up, and that those who wear it can talk just as distinctly without front teeth as with them. Possibly! But why, then, do not the old men wear a pelele, too? They never do.

There exists a surprising similitude between the lower part of the face of a woman who wears the pelele and the beak of the female trumpet hornbill,— the Hondo-Hondo of the natives, — a bird which is indigenous (although not exclusively so) in the countries whose inhabitants wear that ornament. While the male Hondo-Hondo carries, over beak and forehead, the helmet of a Roman centurion, his partner contents herself with a round disc, like a pelele in shape and size, which she wears midway between the root of the bill and its tip. The resemblance is so striking, that the observer involuntarily asks himself if it is not due to something more than a coincidence! Can it not be that, in the long, long ago, some of the women decided to follow the bird’s example, as a new and original attraction in their intercourse with man? Or was It a sultan, perhaps, who, in a barbarous humor, experimented as to how his women would look with the female hornbill’s jewel, and thus set the fashion?

Unlike the chipini, the pelele is, fortunately, disappearing. It is scarcely ever met with, now, in the Shire highlands, although the people to the east of Lake Nyasa still wear it. The missionaries, I am told, are doing their best to induce the children to refuse to undergo the perforation above the lip, which is necessary for the insertion of the stud.

The indifference of natives to human physical beauty, which practically amounts to its total elimination as a factor in the relations between the sexes, has often been commented upon. A native whose attention you draw to the handsome features of another native — either woman or man — always responds vaguely, indifferently, never emphatically, rather giving the impression that he does not quite understand what you mean. It is significant that there exists, in the Swahili language, no word which expresses handsome, or beautiful, exclusively. The word zuri, the only one used in this sense, means good, as well as beautiful, the first idea conveyed, when it is applied to a person, being always that of moral, rather than physical, excellence.

The incongruity which often exists between parties forming a union,almost suggests the absence of even individuality as a factor in these relations. And yet it would probably be incorrect and unjust to explain the phenomenon by the preponderance of mere brute sensuality over all finer feelings; for it cannot be denied that natives are by no means devoid of a sense of beauty. They admire it in animals, in flowers, in pictures, landscapes, and music; they have clever artists; and their perception of what is ridiculous in expression or appearance is perhaps keener than that of the average European, notwithstanding their passion for the odd and the baroque. One might say, that their indifference to beauty is confined exclusively to sexrelations, or that their æsthetic sense is in default only where these relations come into play.

The explanation of this bizarre trait in the character of the African Negro can perhaps be found in the surmise expressed by the famous author of The Traveling Diary of a Philosopher, that natives of the Tropics cannot feel love as we do, our love being founded entirely on an imaginative power which they do not possess; for, surely, the faculty to feel love is an essential condition of the faculty to appreciate physical beauty.