Note 57 — CHAP. XV.

One Sunday morning during my stay, an owner of a washing came to the house of the Intendant, and brought him two miserable diamonds of bad color, which did not weigh together above five grains, and these, he said, were all which his ten negroes had found in six weeks. In the course of conversation, the Intendant observed that all the smugglers were either imprisoned or dispersed, when the man immediately assumed an appearance of great disgust at the mention of persons of so vile a description, and was liberal in his epithets of abuse on them. If I durst have enquired how it happened that his negroes in six weeks could find only two bad-colored diamonds, what emotions would this immaculate miner have manifested!