Page:An account of a savage girl.djvu/54

26 herself from wild beasts, or to discover more easily at a distance animals proportioned to her strength and her wants, which she attacked for food. These circumstances were so strongly fixed in her imagination, that when she began to understand French, but before she could express herself in it, which did not happen till a long while after she was taken, when asked whence she came, and who was her father and mother? she used to point to a tree, if there was one near her, and to the ground at the foot of it. The only particular of her infancy of which she retains a slight remembrance, was her having seen, when very young, either in the sea or some river, she knows not which, a huge animal swimming with two feet, like a dog, having a round head resembling that of a bull dog, and large sparkling eyes: that, seeing the creature approaching as if to devour her, she escaped to the land, and ran a great way off. I asked her if the creature had only two feet, and if it had hair, and of what colour? To which she answered, That she did not take time to observe it particularly; but that she saw no more than two feet with which it swam: that it appeared to have but about one half of its body above the water, and the rest below: that she believed she saw hair on it, of a greyish black colour, and short, somewhat like that of a dog whose hair has been newly cut.