Page:Account of a most surprizing savage girl.pdf/20

 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, which breaks over them, and 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 painted her black, with a view to make her pass for a negro.

She says further of the country from whence she was carried away, that the people there had no cloathing but skins and made no use of fire at all, so that when she came to France, she could not bear the fire, and hardly even the close air of a room, or the breath of persons who were near her. There were, she says, another sort of men in this country, who were bigger and stronger than her people, and all covered with hair and those people were at war with her