Note 60 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
Dr. M‘Leod sadly errs (pp. 51, 53) when saying, “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.” He is apparently somewhat a farceur, that doctor. According to Mr. Duncan (vol. i. p. 141), if a man commit adultery with the wife of another, and the case is laid before the King, the offender is doomed to serve, so long as he is capable, in the capacity of a soldier, and when unfit for that service, he was generally offered as a sacrifice at one of the King’s annual Customs; but the latter part of this cruel sentence has been abolished by the late King of Dahome (Gezo), who is much more merciful than his predecessors.