The penalty is
either drowning or burning alive: except in the case of a chief
or a very rich man, little or no difference is made between
wilful murder, justifiable homicide, and accidental manslaughter-
-the reason of this, say their jurists, is to make people more
careful. Here, again, we find a sense of the sanctity of life the
reverse of barbarous. Cutting and maiming are punished by the
fine of a slave.
And now briefly to resume the character of the Mpongwe, a nervous
and excitable race of negroes. The men are deficient in courage,
as the women are in chastity, and neither sex has a tincture of
what we call morality. To commercial shrewdness and eagerness
they add exceptional greed of gain and rascality; foreign rum and
tobacco, dress and ornaments, arms and ammunition have been
necessaries to them; they will have them, and, unless they can
supply themselves by licit, they naturally fly to illicit means.
Yet, despite threats of poison and charges of witchcraft, they
have arrived at an inkling of the dogma that "honesty is the best
policy:" the East African has never dreamed it in the moments of
his wildest imagination.
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