courame'. 105 



inward impulses, or the instinctive promptings with which nature has 

 gifted it. 



Notwithstanding the favours with which she was loaded, Courame 

 was always pensive and melancholy. The same sadness might he re- 

 marked in her, which appears to be so sensibly felt by all beings re- 

 moved from the clime of their birth. She languished like the flower 

 which droops, withers, and decays, when planted in an ungenial soil. 

 Her inclinations resisted all those tastes which were studied to be im- 

 parted to her. She sighed for her native land. A secret inspiration 

 told her that she was formed for a different existence ; and a sort of 

 sauvagerie shone out from beneath the elegant manner she had ac- 

 quired by civilization. There was in her looks something vague and 

 absent, which seemed to isolate her in the midst of those who sur- 

 rounded her. Courame anxiously questioned all who had been to the 

 Approuague river ; she had been told the country which gave her 

 birth was to the east of Cayenne, her eyes were, therefore, ever medi- 

 tatively turning towards the rising sun ; indeed, in her daily walks, 

 she could not gaze on the calm sea without feeling a longing desire 

 to return to the place of her infancy. 



Courame felt no delight in associating with girls of her own age ; 

 for the children who shared in her recreations were not of her tribe. 

 She wept because she had neither brother or sister. She regretted 

 the pastimes of her country. In the midst of abundance and riches, 

 every thing was wanting, for her mother was not there. 



She was nine years old when taken from the forest of Guiana, and 

 at that age whatever is impressed on the mind is not readily oblite- 

 rated. She was always pensive and abstracted. During the night 

 she would often give way to sobs and tears, and when at length sleep 

 came to her relief, the voice of her mother would disturb her dreams. 

 Notwithstanding all the grief she endured she was still beautiful, 

 though languor was visible in every feature of her countenance, and 

 that touching melancholy which, as an ancient writer has said, is in 

 some degree an ornament of grief. With Madame de St. Croix, 

 Courame was constantly the object of solicitude. She had all the 

 advantages of instruction, from the best masters, which money could 

 procure. Courame listened to her preceptors with attention ; they 

 spoke of her progress in accomplishments as a prodigy. She was 

 taught the French language ; but by her there was one language 

 which was preferred to every other, that was the Galibis — so poor in 

 superfluous words, but so rich in affectionate and tender expressions. 

 Every word of this savage dialect, which had never been used to dis- 

 fOh. vnr., no. xxni. 15 



