MALVALS. 379 
excess of perspiration and modifying the ardour of their fiery 
climate. 
The fruit is eatable; its flesh is sweet, and of an agreeable 
flavour ; the juice, when extracted and mixed with sugar, forms 
a beverage very useful in the putrid and pestilential fevers of the 
country. The fruit is transported into the eastern and southern 
parts of Africa, and the Arabs pass it on to the countries round 
Morocco, whence it finds its way into Egypt. The negroes take 
part of the damaged fruit and the ligneous bark, burn them 
for the sake of the ashes, from which they manufacture soap by 
means of palm oil. They make a still more singular use of the 
trunk of the Baobab; they expose upon it the bodies of those 
among them whom they consider unworthy of the honours of 
sepulture. They select the trunk of some Baobab already attacked 
and hollowed out by insects or fungi; they increase the cavity, 
and make in the trunk a kind of chamber, in which they suspend 
the body. This done, they close up the entrance of this natural 
tomb with a plank. The body becomes perfectly dry in the in- 
terior of this cavity, and becomes a perfect mummy without further 
preparation. This kind of sepulture is especially reserved for the 
Guerrots. The Guerrots are the musicians and poets, who in the 
tombs of negro kings preside at all fétes and dances. During 
their life this kind of talent gives them influence, and makes them 
Tespected by other negroes, who look upon them as sorcerers, 
and honour them under the title; but after death this respect 
is succeeded by a kind of honour. These superstitious and in- © 
fantile people imagine that if they consigned the body of one of 
these sorcerers to the earth, as they would the bodies of other men, 
that they would draw npon themselves the celestial malediction. 
Hence the monstrous Baobab serves as the resting-place of the 
errot. There is a strange poetry in this custom of a barbarous 
People which leads them to bury their poets between heaven and 
earth in the side of the vegetable king. 
: The leaves of Adansonia digitata are of a deep green, and 
divided into five unequal parts, each of which forms a narrow 
lanceolate figure, radiating from a common centre, the outermost 
ng smallest. The flowers, which grow singly in a pendulous 
Position from the bosom of the leaves, are large and white, 
