The Wonder of the West.
The Wonder of the West.
“And where did she come from? and who can she be?
Did she fall from the sky? did she rise from the sea?”
Late one evening in the spring of 1817, the rustic inhabitants of Almondsbury, in Gloucestershire, were surprised by the entrance of a young female in strange attire. She wore leather shoes and black worsted stockings, a black stuff gown with a muslin frill at the neck, and a red and black shawl round her shoulders, and a black cotton shawl on her head. Her height was about five feet two inches, and she carried a small bundle on her arm containing a few necessaries. Her clothes were loosely and tastefully put on in an oriental fashion. Her eyes and hair were black, her forehead was low, her nose short, her mouth wide, her teeth white, her lips large and full, her under lip projected a little, her chin was small and round, her hands were clean and seemed unused to labour. She appeared about twenty-five years of age, was fatigued, walked with difficulty, spoke a language no one could comprehend, and signified by signs her desire to sleep in the village. The cottagers were afraid to admit her, and sought the decision of Mr. Worrall, a magistrate for the county, at Knole, whose lady caused her own maid to accompany her to a public-house in the village, with a request that she should have a supper, and a comfortable bed.
In the morning Mrs. Worrall found her, with strong traces of sorrow and distress on her countenance, and took her with her to Knole, but she went reluctantly. It was Good Friday, and at the mansion, observing a cross-bun, she cut off the cross, and placed it in her bosom.
Paper and a pen were handed to her to write her name; she shook her head: and when she appeared to comprehend what was meant, pointed to herself, and cried “Caraboo.” The next day she was taken to Bristol, examined before the mayor, at the Council-house, and committed to St. Peter’s Hospital as a vagrant, whither persons of respectability flocked to visit the incomprehensible inmate. From that place Mrs. Worrall removed her once more to Knole. A gentleman, who had made several voyages to the Indies, extracted from her signs, and gestures, and articulation, that she was the daughter of a person of rank, of Chinese origin, at “Javasu,” and that whilst walking in her garden, attended by three women, she had been gagged, and bound, and carried off, by the people of a pirate-prow, and sold to the captain of a brig, from whence she was transferred to another ship, which anchored at a port for two days, where four other females were taken in, who, after a voyage of five weeks, were landed at another port: sailing for eleven more weeks, and being near land, she jumped overboard, in consequence of ill usage, and swimming ashore, found herself on this coast, and had wandered for six weeks, till she found her way to Almondsbury. She described herself at her father’s to have been carried on men’s shoulders, in a kind of palanquin, and to have worn seven peacocks’ feathers on the right side of her head, with open sandals on her feet, having wooden soles; and she made herself a dress from some calico, given her by Mrs. Worrall, in the style of her own which had been embroidered. The late Mr. Bird, the artist, sketched her, according to this account, as in the [engraving].
Caraboo.
The particulars connected with these recitals, and her general conduct, were romantic in the extreme. At the end of two months she disappeared; and, to the astonishment of the persons whose sympathies she had excited, the lady Caraboo a native of Javasu, in the east, was discovered to have been born at Witheridge in Devonshire, where her father was a cobbler! A very full account of her singular imposition is given in “A Narrative,” published by Mr. Gutch of Bristol, in 1817, from whence this sketch is taken. After her remarkable adventures, she found it convenient to leave this country. A Bath correspondent writes as follows:—