£00 DISCOVERIES OF THE FRENCH. 
beggars, they certainly have no rivals in the uni* 
verse. 
M. Adanson, after returning to the isle of Sener 
gal, made a voyage as far as Podor, a factory situated 
about sixty leagues up the river. Notwithstanding a 
few occasional shoals, he found the river easily na- 
vigable. Though then at its greatest ebb, it was 
always at least from twenty to thirty feet deep. The 
salt w r ater is not felt more than thirty leagues up ; 
but the influence of the tide reaches as far as Po- 
dor. The greatest rise which Adanson ever ob- 
served the tide to cause at the mouth of the river 
was two feet and a half ; whence he infers, that 
the descent from Podor to the sea does not exceed 
that measure ; so that this extensive track of coun- 
try, with the exception of a few sand hills inter- 
spersed, is almost completely a dead level. 
At Podor, our traveller remarked a number of 
beautiful trees, particularly tamarisks, red gum trees, 
and several other sorts of thorny acacias. The 
button tree also, from the ease with which it re- 
ceives the tool, and its fine yellow colour, appeared 
to him superior for joiners' work to any in the 
world. He had now an opportunity of particular- 
ly observing the ostrich. He saw particularly two 
tame ones, which, with negro children on their backs, 
ran round the village with astonishing rapidity. 
He had the curiosity to cause two full grown ne- 
groes to mount the largest one, which set off with 
