Page:An account of a savage girl.djvu/19

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PREFACE
xi

the terror and astonishment of every body that heard her.

She had, when she was caught at Songi, the bludgeon above mentioned, which she wore in a pouch by her side; she called it boutou, and said, that it had some characters engraved upon the handle of it; And besides this, she had a longer stick, with three pieces of iron at the end of it, one in the middle sharp and pointed, and the other two upon the sides hooked; and the use she made of it, was to stab any wild beast that attack'd her, with the sharp point; and with the hooks she assisted herself in climbing trees, by catching hold of the branches; and she says it was particularly useful to her, in defending her against the bears, when they attempted to follow her up the trees. This weapon, she says, she brought with her from the hot country, but the other from her own.

From the above particulars which I learnt from her own mouth, I think I am able to fix, with some certainty, the country of which she is a native. The author of the following relatiou makes her to be an Esquimaux. But her appearance is sufficient to refute this notion; for she is of a fair complexion, a smooth skin, and features as soft as those of an European.

Whereas