DISCOVERIES OF THE FRENCH. 199 
by Adanson as the handsomest in this part of 
Africa. They are generally above the middle 
size, and strangers to any species of deformity, ex- 
cept such as arises from accident. The women 
are equally handsome, and to those who have be- 
come reconciled to their colour, many of them ap- 
pear almost perfect beauties. Here an English 
annotator observes, that the numerous progeny, 
produced between the French and these females, 
clearly prove this taste not to be peculiar to M. 
Adanson. 
In one of his excursions, our traveller came to a 
village where no white man had ever before been seen. 
At his first appearance, the place echoed with the 
screams of the children, who ran to hide themselves 
behind their mothers. One of the inhabitants, how- 
ever, having invited him into the interior of the 
village, they began first to gaze at him, and, finally, 
to prefer requests for trinkets and ornaments. The 
bag in which his hair was tied up, being supposed 
a repository for tobacco, excited an earnest impor- 
tunity for a portion of that precious leaf ; and he 
found no relief but in untying it, when no small 
astonishment and consternation was produced by 
the view of its real contents. Our traveller here 
takes occasion to observe, respecting the people of 
this country, that there is nothing so trifling which 
they will not ask or take, and that, as thieves and 
