Note 95 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Dr. M‘Leod (A Voyage to Africa), in 1803, considers Whydah the “Circassia of Africa, not from the fairness, but from the glossy blackness of the ladies’ skins, and the docility of their dispositions.” Commander Forbes (1849) seems to have suffered from the “meretricious gaze of the females,” which he attributes to the “personal depravity of the slave merchants.” I saw no signs of this debauchery; the people were civil and respectful—the one thing needful in the African.