This page has been validated.
PREFACE
xv

a word of the Caribbee language. And it is very natural to suppose, that she should remember more terms of that language than of her own, having come last from that country; and having, as I imagine, staid some considerable time in it: For though, as she says, she was only seven or eight years of age when she was carried away from her own country, she appeared to be of the age of thirteen or fourteen, when she was taken in the woods of Champagne, as the people of Songi informed me.

And thus the history of Madamoiselle Le Blanc seems shortly to be, that she is originally of a white race of people, living somewhere upon the coast of Hudson's Bay.—That she was carried off when a child by a French ship trading in that bay, with an intention to make a slave of her, and to pass her for a negroe girl; for which purpose she was painted black.—That she was first carried to one of the Caribbee islands belonging to the French, from whence she was brought to Europe in a ship which was wrecked probably somewhere upon the coast of France.

The learned who have read what the ancient authors, and particularly Diodorus Siculus in his third book of Universal History, have told us of the savage nations of those times, will not be much surprised with the account here given of this

wild