CAPTAIN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. 81 



agreeable to the women, who, it seems, estimate a man's 

 beauty by the wideness of this cavity, which in some measur- 

 ed near an inch, the whole of the teeth, and particularly tlie 

 two front ones, being enormously broad, and very white. 



Our Sonio visitors were almost without exception sulky 

 looking vagabonds, dirty, swarming with lice, and scaled 

 over with the itch, all strong symptoms of their having been 

 civilized by the Portuguese, and in their appearance and 

 manners forming a striking contrast, not unimportant to the 

 study of national manners, to our Malemba guests, who 

 were chearful, clean, drest even to foppishness, and choqiiSd 

 their glasses with us ; in short, quite gentlemen d la Frcuicaise, 

 the nation with which they have had most intercourse. 

 Some canoes brought on board a few pigs, goats, fowls and 

 egojs, for sale, but the prices they asked were so exorbitant, 

 that for fear of spoiling the market up the river, by their re- 

 ports of our facility, I confined myself to the purchase of a 

 few fowls and eggs. The value they here set on our dift'er- 

 ent articles for barter was by no means in the proportion of 

 their respective English prices ; for an empty bottle, 

 a looking-glass, or knife, invoiced at 3d, we got a full grown 

 fowl, while for a bunch of beads that cost 2s. lOd. they 

 offered but two ; and for a small goat, they wanted four 

 fathoms of blue baft. We however purchased for a mere 



M 



