Page:Account of a most surprizing savage girl.pdf/21

This page has been validated.
A SAVAGE GIRL.
21

people, and used to eat them when they could catch them.

In the hot country to which she was first carried, she says, she was reimbarked, and performed a very long voyage, during which, the master, to whom she had been sold, wanted to make her work, particularly, at a sort of needle work; he beat her, but her mistress, who she thinks spoke French, was very kind to her.—That the ship having been wrecked, the crew took to the boat; but she, and a negro girl that was on board, were left to shift for themselves. The negro girl, she says, could not swim so well as she, but she kept herself above water, by taking hold of le Blanc's foot, and in this way they both got on shore. They then traversed a great tract of country, commonly travelling all night, and sleeping in the day time on the tops of trees. They subsisted upon the roots which she dug out of the ground with her fingers, and particularly her thumb, which by that, and by the use she made of it in climbing, and leaping from one tree to another, was much larger than the thumbs of other people. They also catched as much game as they could, which they ate raw with the warm blood