The Life and Writings of M. Desfontaines. 205 



so privileged by climate and vegetation which lies on the south of 

 Atlas and extends to the desert of Sahara ; his researches in these 

 two regencies were facilitated by the protection of the French Con- 

 sul and by the kind disposition, vi^ith which our traveller was suc- 

 cessful in inspiring the Deys. He had permission to accompany them 

 in their annual excursions for the collection of taxes, and was thus 

 enabled to visit in safety provinces which strangers cannot penetrate 

 without great danger : he herborized every day, accompanied by an 

 escort, or at least by a Grand Turk, who armed with a musket, defen- 

 ded him from the attacks of the Moors. Although he found the 

 utility of this protection, it was often at his own expense, and I have 

 more than once been gratified in hearing him relate with an unaffec- 

 ted sentiment of horror, the fear which he constantly felt, that the 

 least impoliteness in a Moor might be punished by a shot from this 

 vigilant guard, as a simple proof of his devotedness to his service. 

 But if the brutality of these subaltern agents inspired him with real 

 horror, he often testified the admiration which he had felt at the sa- 

 gacity and impartiality, with which the ignorant and barbarous prin- 

 ces of these regencies rendered justice to their subjects by processes, 

 which, it is tnie, are somewhat rude, awarding damages to him who 

 was justly entitled to them and the bastinado to him who had been 

 extortionate under the guise of Justice. 



During the two years of his stay in Barbary, Desfontaines relaxed 

 nothing in his efforts to travel over and to study the country in all 

 directions. As strong and vigorous as a hunter, of temperate habits, 

 active in the pursuit of objects which possessed any interest, he did 

 in a manner, exhaust the botany of that country so that during the 

 half century, nearly, since he left it, scarcely a single species has 

 been known to have escaped his penetrating eye. He also devoted 

 much attention to its zoology. The beautiful collections of insects, 

 deposited by him in the museum, furnished Fabricius and Latreille 

 with various new objects, — and he described himself in a special me- 

 moir published in 1787, several new species of birds observed on 

 the Barbary Coast. His acquaintance with the writings of antiqui- 

 ty, qualified him to collect very judiciously, many documents on the 

 ancient geography and antique monuments of the country. His 

 memoir on the Lotus of Lybia, which nourished the Lotophagi, — 

 that upon the sweet acorn oak, which grows on Mount Atlas, and 

 which has given rise to the idea, that our ancestors fed on acorns, and 

 that upon the economical uses of the date tree, — are proofs of his 



