The next moment I
thought that it must be that of some wild animal, and was about to
re-enter the hut when it was repeated. Telling my wife what I was about
to do, I desired the two men to accompany me, and groped my way through
the darkness in the direction whence the sound had come. Again I heard
the cry, and, guided by it, I almost stumbled over a woman lying on the
ground, with a child in her arms. The woman was speechless, but was
uttering low moans. I took the child in my arms and hurried back to the
hut, while the men followed me, conveying the almost inanimate form of
the woman.

"`Heaven has sent us here to rescue the little creature,' exclaimed my
wife, as I put the infant in her arms.

"She lost no time in taking off its wet clothes and wrapping it up in a
shawl.

"`It is a little girl,' she said, `and I trust has received no injury.
We must attend to the poor mother,' she added, as the men brought in the
body of the woman and laid her before the blazing fire. `Why, she
cannot be the mother of this child; she is an Indian, and the child is
beautifully fair,' exclaimed my wife, as, giving me the baby, she knelt
down by the side of the woman to try and restore her to animation. All
her efforts, however, were in vain. Before many minutes had past she
had breathed her last. We took off some of the few ornaments she wore
about her dress, to assist us in identifying her, and the men then
placed the body at the further end of the hut.

"We had, as you may suppose, no sleep that night; my wife, indeed, was
fully occupied in nursing the baby. Providentially I had brought,
instead of wine, a bottle of milk for my wife, very little of which she
had drank, and with this she was happily able to feed the child.

"How the woman and child had come to be in the position in which we had
found them, I could not tell; but our guides asserted that they must
have escaped from a wrecked canoe, and possibly others of the party
might have got safe on shore and would be able to tell us to whom the
child belonged.

"When morning came the storm cleared off, and though my wife was anxious
to get back to our lodgings, I set off to explore the beach with one of
our guides. We went a considerable distance in both directions, but no
one could we discover, nor a trace of a canoe or boat of any sort. If
the woman had escaped therefore, as we supposed, from a canoe, it must
have foundered or been knocked to pieces on the rock