108 CAPTAIN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. 



from the King of England, he begged il might not be pro- 

 duced until all his gentlemen were dismissed. 



While we were seated in the audience court, the King's 

 women (of whom he has fifty), were peeping out of one of 

 the squares, and before retiring, the King very politely 

 offered me the choice of all his daughters, while his courtiers 

 as civilly proferred their Avives ; so that I began to fear 

 I should find myself in the same dilemma as Frere Jean (in 

 Compere Matthieu) ; fortunately, however, the gentlemen 

 who accompanied me were not so fastidious as the Frere's 

 companions. I however learnt that the ladies, though ap_ 

 parently nothing loth to change husbands, resisted all soli- 

 citations to consummation during day-light, under the ap- 

 prehension that the fetiche would kill them. The language 

 of the men in offering their women was most disgusting 

 and obscene ; being composed of the vilest words picked up 

 from English, French, and Portuguese. The faces of many 

 of the women were by no means unprepossessing, and their 

 forms extremely symmetric. Among the men we saw one 

 marked with the small-pox, another with a short leg, and a 

 third with a Avithered arm. Great numbers of the boys had 

 a large knot at the navel. A cutaneous disorder seemed to 

 be very general, and, like the itch, chiefly on the wrists ; 

 and the hands of several of the men were perfectly bleached 

 as if from a scald. 



