If, 



366 NARRATIVE OF AN 



CHAP, any perfon hefitate to believe this extraordinary fa(SV, let 

 . J^^^^V^ them read Monfieur Godifi's well-anthenticated letter to 

 Tiis friend Monfieur de la Condamme^ wherein he gives 

 an account of the dreadful fufferings of his lady during 

 her route from Rio Hamba to Laguna^ through the woods 

 of South America, in October 1769; where a delicate 

 woman, after being deferted by the Indian guides, and 

 after both her brothers had fallen martyrs to their hard- 

 fhips and mifery, fubfifted teji days alone in a wild foreft 

 without food, without knowing where flie was, and fur- 

 rounded with tigers, ferpents, and dangers of every de- 

 fcription : I fay, let them only read the narrative of 

 this lady's fuflferings, and their credulity will no longer 

 be flaggered at what I myfelf have related. I have, in- 

 deed, even omitted fails, which, on account of their 

 Ungularity, muft in the eyes of fome have appeared to 

 border on the marvellous. But in the forefts of South 

 America fuch extraordinary realities are to be found, that 

 there is afluredly no need to have recourfe to fiction or 

 the leaft exaggeration.] 



Who, for inftance, would believe, that almofl: a whole 

 detachment of eighty marines, one day marching through 

 a thick wood, imagined to a man that they were ftepping 

 one after another over a large fallen tree, that obftrudted 

 their way; till at length it began to move, and proved to 

 be no other than a full grown ferpent of the aboma kind, 

 meafuring, according to Colonel Fourgeoud's computa- 

 tion, between thirty and forty feet in length ? yet this 



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