The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew, King of the Beggars: Containing his Life, a Dictionary of the Cant Language, and many Entertaining Particulars of that Extraordinary ManUnknown
General
The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew, King of the Beggars: Containing his Life, a Dictionary of the Cant Language, and many Entertaining Particulars of that Extraordinary Man
Hunting being the principal employment and diversion of the Indians, at
which they are very expert, Mr. Carew had an opportunity of gratifying,
to the utmost, his taste for this diversion, there scarcely passing a day
but he was a party amongst them at some hunting match or other, and most
generally with the king himself. He was now grown into such great
respect among them, that they offered him a wife out of the principal
families of the place, nearly related to the king; but our hero,
notwithstanding these honours, could not forget his native country, the
love of which glowed within his breast; he had therefore, for some time,
formed the design of leaving them, and, very soon after, found an
opportunity of doing so.
One day, being out a hunting, they chanced to fall in company with some
other Indians, near the river Delaware. When the chase was over, they
sat down to be merry together, and having got some rum amongst them, they
drank pretty freely, and fell to singing and dancing after their country
fashion.
Mr. Carew took this opportunity of slipping away, and, going down to the
river side, seized one of the canoes. Though he was entirely
unacquainted with the method of managing them, he boldly pushed from
shore, landing near Newcastle in Pennsylvania; the place he crossed over
being called Duck’s Creek, which communicates with the great Delaware.
Mr. Carew being now got, as it were, among his countrymen again, soon
transformed himself into a quaker: pulling off the button from his hat,
and flapping it on every side, he put on as demure and precise a look, as
if his whole family had been quakers, and he had never seen any other
sort of people. Here, reader, it will be necessary to remark, that, as
our hero is no longer amongst simple honest Indians, neither polite,
lettered, nor deceitful, but among polished people, whose knowledge has
taught them to forget the ways of nature, and to act every thing in
disguise; whose hearts and tongues are as far distant asunder, as the
North from the South pole, and who daily over-reach one another in the
most common occurrences of life; we hope it will be no disgrace to our
hero if among such he appears polished as the best, and puts on a fresh
disguise as often as it suits his convenience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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