 And thus the country abounded, end to end, with lovely girls, robust and complex, generated through these successive grafts, ripened in the heat, their nudity polished in childhood by the air and the waters... One would see no gesture, pose or movement that was not essential and harmonious with the surroundings — each so immediate, so supple, so deft, so spare, drawing on the atmosphere for buoyancy, and on nothing but ambient light for finery.To those with open eyes, this living beauty is all the more engrossing for its presence in all places and at all times.The book received the Grand Prize of Colonial Literature ("Le prix de littérature coloniale") in 1929, but afterwards fell into obscurity, until its re-release in modern French and English editions.