M. COCHET, M. BERARD. 



95 



and here lives my kind friend M. Cochet, Consul 

 de France. He came, expecting to find civiliza- 

 tion, whist in the evening, ladies' society, and 

 the pianoforte : he had been hoaxed in Paris 

 about Colonel Hamerton's daughters. He is 

 thoroughly disgusted. Even the Consular re- 

 sidence is the meanest of its kind. No wonder 

 that M. Le Capitaine Guillain was c froisse 

 dans son amour-propre national ' when he en- 

 tered it. 



Ear better, and more open to the breeze, is 

 the house of the hospitable M. Berard, agent to 

 Messrs Eabaud Ereres, of Marseille. The one 

 disadvantage of the site is the quantity of Kho- 

 pra, or cocoa-nut meat, split and sun-dried. It 

 evolves, especially at night-time, a noxious gas, 

 and the strongest stomachs cannot long resist 

 the oily, nausea-breeding odour which tarnishes 

 silver, and which produces fatal dysentery. The 

 Zanzibar trade, with the exception of cloves, is 

 not generally aromatic. Copal, being washed in 

 an over-kept solution of soda, smells not, as was 

 remarked to the c Dragon of AYantley,' like bal- 

 sam. And ton upon ton of cowries, strewed in 

 the sun, or piled up in huge heaps till the mol- 

 lusc decays away, can hardly be deemed Sabsean 

 or even commonly wholesome. 



