Women in the Sierra Leone Protectorate fulfil a role which, as in the case of the men, varies in accordance with their social age. In the early stages there is little distinction between the sexes either in training or in their relation to the rest of the community.

Among the Mende, the arrival of a female child is greeted by the women with even greater delight than is that of a boy. They say that girls do not forget their mothers in time of need as boys sometimes do. A girl, like a male child, is named according to whether she is the first or a subsequent surviving child of her mother; if she is the first she will be known as Boi. The children who follow her may be named after various ancestors, or after important living members of the family. The naming is done four days after birth, and the individual woman, whose name the child is to bear, carries her out in the early morning, faces the sun, spits three times on to the child's face, and says: ‘Resemble me in all my ways and deeds, because you are named after me.’ As an infant, the child is referred to as nyalui, and though she may enjoy the considerable affection of both parents, her social significance is very small. Should she die, there is no crying for her. The corpse is simply wrapped up in leaves and buried under a banana tree, or at some other place where it is customary to deposit rubbish.

It is an interesting feature of the religious practice of the Mende people of Sierra Leone that, with one exception, no offerings are made to any image of wood or stone or metal. That one exception is the stone figurine called nomoli and its use is restricted entirely to helping in the production of rice. The origin of the nomoli is still wrapped in the mystery of antiquity but it continues to play a fairly important part in the life of many of the older farmers and is still widely used.

D'aucuns pensent—à tort selon nous, — que les Pygmoïdes ont une langue qui serait totalement différente de celle de leurs maîtres. Il est vrai que les Pygmoïdes parlent un dialecte qui sonne étrange. On y rencontre plusieurs mots dont leurs maîtres actuels n'usent jamais. Des Baotó qui ont des Batswá à leur disposition, les comprennent très facilement, et beaucoup savent parler leur dialecte. Il en est tout autrement des Baotó qui n'ont jamais fréquenté les Batswá: au début, ils ne les comprennent pas du tout.

Marriage among the Nuer is brought about by payment of bridewealth and by the performance of certain ceremonial rites. The rites cannot take place without the payments, but transfers of cattle do not by themselves bring about the union. Both are necessary and they proceed in a connected movement towards the full establishment of the union. Each enforces and reinforces the other. The bride's people can, by holding up the rites, put pressure on the bridegroom's people to make the payments due to them, and the bridegroom's people can, by withholding the cattle, induce the girl's family and kin to advance the ceremonies. First one pedal is pressed down and then the other as the marriage is propelled to its appointed end, the birth of children and the sharing of a home. It is undertsood that payments should have reached a certain point before a certain rite is held, and the performance of the rite is a recognition of the transfer of cattle up to that point. Payments of cattle and marriage rites therefore tend to alternate, though there is no fixity about the alternation and no marriage is exactly the same as another in this respect. The new social ties of conjugality and affinity are made stronger by each payment and by each ceremony, so that a marriage which is insecure at the beginning of the negotiations becomes surer with every new payment and rite; both sides, by the giving and receiving of cattle and by joint participation in the rites, becoming more deeply committed to bringing about the union. Therefore a marriage which has reached the final rites may be regarded as a stable union and will generally prove to be so.

Chez tous les peuples, civilisés ou non, le pouvoir royal est marqué ou symbolisé par un emblème qui peut être une couronne, un sceptre, ou quelqu'autre objet comme l'escabeau doré, ou Golden Stool que le livre de Edwin Smith a rendu célèbre. Au Basutoland l'un des premiers portraits du roi Moshesh le représente tenant en main un bâton, ou sceptre, d'environ un pied et demi de longueur et surmonté d'une boule ronde. C'étaitle molamu oa tsukulu, ou ‘bâton (en corne) de rhinocéros’ qui est pour les chefs du Basutoland, le principal emblème du pouvoir. Parmi les écrivains qui ont dépeint les coutumes des Basuto nous n'en connaissons pas qui aient parlé en détail de ce sceptre d'apparence plutôt commune, mais dont l'importance mérite d'être signalée.