Page:Account of a most surprising savage girl.pdf/19

19 old there, is able to climb a tree.That the people live in little huts above the waters, like beavers, and subsist chiefly by fishing. She herself was so much used to water, that when she came to France, she could not live without it, and was in use to plunge into it over head and ears, and to continue in it, swimming about, and diving like an otter, or any other amphibious animal.

She supposes she was only about seven or eight years of age when she was carried away from her own country; yet, by that time, she had learned to swim, to fish, to shoot with the bow and arrow, to climb, and to leap from one tree to another, like a squirrel. She was taken up at sea, where she was with other children, set in a little round canoe, which was covered with a skin, that drew about her middle like a purse, and prevented the water from getting in; for, she says, it is the manner in her country, to put the children early out to sea, in such canoes, in order to accustom them to bear the sea breaking over them, which though it may overturn the canoe, does not sink it. When she was taken up, she was put aboard a great ship, carried to a warm country, and sold as a slave; the person who sold her having first