The strange individual under discussion was unquestionably a satyr, or
at least one of those four-footed, hairy men, such as the authentic
James Carter declared he had met with in the northern part of America.
Some, thinking this conclusion too simple, adroitly insinuated that no
one among the sailors who had met this monster, had noticed in him so
great a number of paws. Why four paws?--why should he not be a
monopedous man, a man whose body, terminated by a single leg, cleared,
with this support alone, considerable distances? Was not the existence
of the monopedous man attested by modern travellers, and even in
antiquity and the middle ages, by Pliny and St. Augustine?
Others preferred to imagine in this singular personage the acephalous
man, the man without a head, named by the grave Baumgarthen as
existing on the new continent. They had not discovered many legs, but
neither had they discovered a head; why should he have one?
And the discussion continued, and not a voice was raised to risk this
judicious observation; if neither head nor limbs have been
distinguished, it may perhaps be because he has been seen only in the
dark.
The next day, each wished to be satisfied; a regular hunt was
organized against this phenomenon; they set out, invaded his retreat,
pursued him, surrounded him, at last seized him, and the brave sailors
of Great Britain discovered with stupefaction, in this monopedous,
acephalous man, in this satyr, this cercopithecus, what? A countryman,
a Scotchman, a subject of Queen Anne!
It was Selkirk; Selkirk, his hair long and in disorder, his limbs
encased in fragments of skins, and half deprived of his reason.
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