A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10: Arranged in systematic order: Forming a complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land, from the earliest ages to the present time.Kerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10: Arranged in systematic order: Forming a complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land, from the earliest ages to the present time.
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
This female savage would not eat any of their boiled or roasted meats,
so they gave her one of the birds they had found in the canoes. Having
pluckt off the long feathers, she opened it with a muscle shell, cutting
in the first place behind the right wing, and then above the stomach.
After that, drawing out the guts, she laid the liver a short time on the
fire, and eat it almost raw. She then cleaned the gizzard, which she eat
quite raw, as she did the body of the bird. Her children eat in the same
manner, one being a girl of four years of age, and the other a boy, who,
though only six months old, had most of his teeth, and could walk
alone.[90] The woman looked grave and serious at her meal, though the
seamen laughed heartily at her strange figure, and unusual mode of
feeding. She afterwards sat down on her heels like an ape; and she slept
all gathered up in a heap, with her infant between her arms, having her
breast in his mouth. After keeping her two days on board, de Weert set
her on shore, giving her a gown and cap, with necklace and bracelets of
glass beads. He gave her also a small mirror, a knife, a nail, an awl,
and a few other toys of small value, with which she seemed much pleased.
He cloathed the boy also, and decorated him with glass beads of all
colours; but carried the girl to Holland, where she died. The mother
seemed much concerned at parting with her daughter, yet went into the
boat without resistance or noise. She was carried to the shore, a league
west from the ship, to a place which she pointed out, where the seamen
found a fire and some utensils, which made the seamen believe that the
savages had run away on seeing the boat.
[Footnote 90: They had no means to ascertain his age, and must have
concluded him only six months old from his small size; but from his
teeth and walking alone, he was more likely to have been two years old,
and his diminutive size was probably occasioned by the miseries of the
climate, and wretchedness of every kind to which these outcasts of
nature are subjected.--E.]
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