form. Their heads and breasts were covered with
a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats,
and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the fore parts of their
legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see
their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. They had no tails, nor
any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus, which, I
presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the
ground, for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often
stood on their hind feet. They climbed high trees as nimbly as a
squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind,
terminating in sharp points, and hooked. They would often spring, and
bound, and leap, with prodigious agility. The females were not so large
as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their
faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their
bodies, except about the anus and pudenda. The dugs hung between their
fore feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. The
hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black, and yellow.
Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an
animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an
antipathy. So that, thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and
aversion, I got up, and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct
me to the cabin of some Indian. I had not got far, when I met one of
these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. The ugly
monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways, every feature of his
visage, and stared, as at an object he had never seen before; then
approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or
mischief I could not tell; but I drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow
with the flat side of it, for I durst not strike with the edge, fearing
the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know
that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle. When the beast felt the
smart, he drew back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty
came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious
faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it,
kept them off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood, getting
hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began
to discharg