Polygamy Is Allowed To Any Extent, And It Is Generally Carried As Far As The Means Of The Gentlemen Will Admit, As, After A Short Period, Or Honeymoon, The Women Are Employee In The Fields And Plantations, And Usually Are No Better Situated Than The Common Servants Of Their Husbands.

Adultery is punished by slavery, or the value of a slave, by the offender, and the lady likewise subjects

Herself to be sold, but it is remarked that this measure is seldom resorted to, and it sometimes happens that a handsome wife is repeatedly turned to advantage by her husband, in alluring the unwary into heavy damages.

The state of women is upon the whole very abject in Dahomy. Wives approach their husbands with every mark of the humblest submission. In presenting him even with a calabash containing his food, after she has cooked it, she kneels and offers it with an averted look, it being deemed too bold to stare him full in the face. By their constantly practising genuflexion upon the bare ground, their knees become in time almost as hard as their heels.

A mutinous wife or a vixen, sometimes the treasure and delight of an Englishman; the enlivener of his fireside, and his safeguard from ennui, is a phenomenon utterly unknown in Dahomy - that noble spirit, which animates the happier dames in lands of liberty, being here, alas! extinguished and destroyed.

In most nations a numerous progeny is considered a blessing, as being likely to prop the declining years of their parents, but in Dahomy, children are taken from their mothers at an early age, and distributed in villages remote from the places of their nativity, where they remain with but little chance of being ever seen, or at least recognized by their parents afterwards. The motive for this is, that there may be no family connexion nor combinations; no associations that might prove injurious to the king's unlimited power. Hence each individual is detached and unconnected, and having no relative for whom he is interested, is solicitous only for his own safety, which he consults by the most abject submission. Paternal affection, and filial love, therefore, can scarcely be said to exist. Mothers, instead of cherishing, endeavour to suppress those attachments for their offspring, which they know will be violated, as soon as their children are able to undergo the fatigue of being removed from them.

At a particular period of the year, generally in April or May, a grand annual festival is held, which may with much propriety be termed a carnival. On this occasion the chief magistrates or caboceers of the different towns and districts, the governors of the English, French, and Portuguese settlements, are expected to attend at the capital, with their respective retinues; and the captains of ships, and factors trading at Whidah, usually take this opportunity of paying their respects to the king. A great part of the population, in fact; repair to Abomey, which resembles some great fair, from the number of booths and tents erected in it for various purposes.

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