ADAMSES NARRATIVE. 
477 
ables them to approach and retire without danger. 
The flesh is etaen for food, and the teeth are of 
great value. Adams has somewhat committed his 
reputation, by asserting that an elephant which he 
saw killed was twenty feet high, and had four 
tusks. To this he has added the report of an ani- 
mal about the size of a large dog, called courcoo, 
having an opening in its back like a pocket, in 
which it carries its prey. Neither of these state- 
ments are very credible ; but the editor justly ob- 
serves, that a personage such as Adams, reporting, 
at the distance of four years, what he had observed, 
not at all with the eye of a naturalist, could not be 
expected to be rigidly accurate upon every point. 
The courcoo he had never seen himself, but re- 
ceived merely the report of the negroes upon it. 
The domestic birds are Guinea fowls. The wild 
birds are ostriches, owls, eagles, crows, green par- 
rots, a large brown bird that lives upon fish, and 
several smaller birds. The river is well stored 
with fish. 
It may be proper to bring together all the state- 
ments of Adams, relative to the interesting subject 
of the commerce of Tombuctoo. He makes the 
extraordinary assertion, that there are no shops in 
that city. M. Dupuis informs us, that some of 
the Barbary traders had assured him that there 
were shops, others had made a report similar to 
Adams. It appears totally out of the question? 
✓ 
