adanson's narrative. 
271 
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, however, having invited 
him into the interior of the village, they began 
first to gaze at him, and, finally, to prefer re- 
quests for trinkets and ornaments. The bag in 
which his hair was tied up, being supposed a re- 
pository for tobacco, excited an earnest importu- 
nity for a portion of that precious leaf 5 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 beggars, they certainly have no rivals 
in the universe. 
M. Adanson, after returning to the isle of Se- 
2-5 
