and even this is at best confined to the clothes and ornaments which
she wears. On the death of a married woman all her effects go to her
husband, or, if he be dead, they go to her children or descendants,
male and female, equally, If she has no children or descendants, they
go to her husband's father, or, failing him, to such other person or
persons as would have been entitled to inherit if her effects had
been those of her husband. Her own blood relations do not come in,
as she had been bought and paid for by her husband. If the deceased
woman were a spinster, then her effects would pass to her father,
or, failing him, to her brothers, or, failing them, to her nearest
male relatives on her father's side.

The guardianship of and responsibility for infant children whose
father dies falls primarily upon the children's mother, and she,
if and when she returned to her own people, would probably take the
children away with her, though her sons, who shared in the inheritance
from their father, would usually come back again to their own village
when they became grown up, and might do so even when comparatively
young. If there is no mother of the children, the guardianship and
responsibility is taken up by one or more of the relatives of either
the deceased father or deceased mother of the children, and it might
be that some children would be taken over by some of such relatives,
and some by others. There appears, however, to be no regular rule as
to all this, the question being largely one of convenience.

Adopted children have in all matters of inheritance the same rights
as actual children.

From the above particulars it will be seen that there is no system
of descent in the female line or of mother-right among the Mafulu,