Charles Marie de La Condamine

“ The savage was at last emboldened to come down the tree, and receive the roots and fishes; but the woman then enticing her from the tree, by retiring insensibly, gave time to the men who were lying in wait for her, to advance and seize her. She never mentioned any thing of the grief and anxiety she felt on being taken, nor of the efforts she made to escape ”

“ When any company visited M. d’Epinoy at Songi, he used to send for the girl, who soon became more tame, and began to discover much good humour, and a softness and humanity of disposition, which the savage life she had been obliged to follow for self-preservation, had not been able to efface. ”

“ It appears that, after the escape of these two children from the shipwreck, being then incapable of any other views than those of liberty and self-preservation, they pursued no other rout than chance and necessity presented. At night, according to le Blanc, they saw more distinctly than in the day, (which, however, must not be understood literally, though her eyes do still retain somewhat of that faculty,) and travelled about in search of food. The small game which they catched, and the roots of trees, were their provisions. ”

“ By her account, these large strong thumbs were very useful to her during her wild life in the woods; for when she had a mind to pass from one tree to another, if the branches of the two trees were but at a small distance, and though of no greater thickness than her finger, she would place her thumbs on a branch of the tree in which she happened to be, and by their means spring to the other, just like a squirrel. ”

“ This first stratagem having failed, the same person again advised to place a woman and some children near the tree, because savages commonly are not so shy of them as of men: and he bade them, above all, show her a friendly air, and a smiling countenance. His directions were complied with; a woman, with a child in her arms, came walking near the tree, carrying different sorts of roots and two fishes in her hands, which she held out to the savage, who descended a branch or two to be at them, but went back again. ”

“ She had, however, so much strength left, as with the weapon in her hand, to return the blow on the forehead of her antagonist, with such a force as to knock her to the ground screaming frightfully. The chaplet was the reward of her victory, of which she made herself a bracelet. Touched, in the mean time, with compassion for her companion, whose wound bled very much, she ran in search of frogs, and finding one, stripped off its skin with her nails, and covered the wound. After this they separated, she that was wounded taking the road towards the river, and the victorious le Blanc towards Songi. ”

“ She has been supposed to be of the Esquimaux nation; but there is sufficient proof to refute this notion, for she is of a fair complexion, a smooth skin, and features as soft as an European. Whereas the people of the Esquimaux nation are, by the accounts of all travellers, the ugliest of men, of the harshest and most disagreeable features, and all covered with hair. She is certainly not mistaken of the situation of the country which she gives, for it is certainly a very cold country ”

“ They subsisted upon the roots which she dug out of the ground with her fingers, and particularly her thumb, which by that, and by the use she made of it in climbing, and leaping from one tree to another, was much larger than the thumbs of other people. They also catched as much game as they could, which they eat raw with the warm blood in it, in the same manner as a hawk or wild beast does. And she remembers particularly, that they killed a fox, of which they only sucked the blood, finding the flesh very disagreeable. ”