If we now leave the degraded and licentious Kaffirs, going northward
in Eastern Africa, into the region of the lakes--Nyassa, Victoria
Nyanza and Albert Nyanza--embracing British Central, German East, and
British East Africa, we are doomed to disappointment if we expect to
find conditions more favorable to the growth of refined romantic or
conjugal love. We shall not only discover no evidence of what is
vaguely called Platonic love, but we shall find men ignoring even
Plato's injunction (_Laws_, VIII., 840) that they should not be lower
than beasts, which do not mate till they have reached the age of
maturity. H.H. Johnston, in his recent work on British Central Africa,
gives some startling revelations of aboriginal depravity. As these
regions have been known a few years only, the universality of this
depravity disproves most emphatically the ridiculous notion that
savages are naturally pure in their conduct and owe their degradation
to intercourse with corrupt white men. Johnston (409) says:
"A medical missionary who was at work for some time on
the west coast of Lake Nyassa gave me information
regarding the depravity prevalent among the young boys
in the Atonga tribe of a character not even to be
described in obscure Latin. These statements might be
applied with almost equal exactitude to boys and girls
in many other parts of Africa. As regards the little
girls, over nearly the whole of British Central Africa,
chastity before puberty is an unknown condition....
Before a girl becomes a woman (that is to say, before
she is able to conceive), it is a matter of absolute
indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl
remains a virgin after about five years of age."
Girls are often betrothed at birth, or even before, and when four or
five years old are placed at the mercy of the degraded husbands.
Capture is another method of getting a wife, and Johnston's
description of this custom indicates that individual preference is as
weak as we have found it among Kaffirs:
"The women as a rule make no very great resistance on
these occasions. It is almost like playing a game. A
woman is surprised as she goes to get water at the
stream, or when she is on her way to or from the
plantation. The man has only got to show her she is
cornered and that escape is not easy or pleasant and
she submits to be carried off. Of course there are
cases where the woman takes the first opportunity of
running back to her first husband if her captor treats
her badly, and again she may be really attached to her
first husband and make every effort to return to him
for that reason. But as a general rule they seem to
accept very cheerfully these abrupt changes in their
matrimonial existence."
In a footnote he adds:
"The Rev. Duff Macdonald, a competent authority on Yao
manners and customs, says in his book _Africana_: 'I was
told ... that a native man would not pass a solitary woman,
and that her refusal of him would be so contrary to custom
that he might kill her.' Of course this would apply only to
females that are not engaged."