A
Girl It Was, And Thus, Say The Igalwa, Arose The Custom; And
Nowadays, Although They Do Not Engage Their Wives So Early As Did
The Founder Of The Custom, They Adopt Infant Marriage As An
Institution.
I inquired carefully, in the interests of ethnology, as to what
methods of courting were in vogue previously.
They said people
married each other because they loved each other. I hope other
ethnologists will follow this inquiry up, for we may here find a
real golden age, which in other races of humanity lies away in the
mists of the ages behind the kitchen middens and the Cambrian rocks.
My own opinion in this matter is that the earlier courting methods
of the Igalwa involved a certain amount of effort on the man's part,
a thing abhorrent to an Igalwa. It necessitated his dressing
himself up, and likely enough fighting that impudent scoundrel who
was engaged in courting her too; and above all serenading her at
night on the native harp, with its strings made from the tendrils of
a certain orchid, or on the marimba, amongst crowds of mosquitoes.
Any institution that involved being out at night amongst crowds of
those Lembarene mosquitoes would have to disappear, let that
institution be what it might.
The Igalwa are one of the dying-out coast tribes. As well as on
Lembarene Island, their villages are scattered along the banks of
the Lower Ogowe, and on the shores and islands of Eliva Z'Onlange.
On the island they are, so far, undisturbed by the Fan invasion, and
laze their lives away like lotus-eaters.
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