Page:An account of a savage girl.djvu/22

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xiv
PREFACE

and therefore, they could not pronounce his name of Gabriel, but call'd it Aieueil; and the consonants they used most were guttural consonants, such as K, Q, X. From which account it is plain, that the Huron is just such a language, as Madamoiselle Le Blanc described her native language, namely, cries in the throat, a little broken and articulated by some guttural consonants, with very little use of the tongue, and none at all of the lips.

As to the country to which she was first carried, I can discover it with still greater certainty from the name which she gave to her bludgeon, viz. Boutou; and the characters which she said were engraved upon it. For there is an account published by the Sieur La Beaud of the Caribbee islands, in which he tells us, that the Caribbees use a weapon of this sort, which they call Boutou: And he observes particularly, that they have gravings upon it, by way of ornament, which they fill up with paint. It therefore appears to me certain, that the warm country to which Madamoiselle Le Blanc was first carried, was one of the Caribbees or Antilles islands; and that though she may have brought with her the bludgeon from her own country, yet she certainly learned the name of it among the Caribbees. Her other weapon, above described, she called Tribié, which I think is very probably

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