EXTRAVAGANT DISPLAY OF EMOTION. 877

ecstasies, the variety of postures which these poor delivered people
ran into to express the joy of their souls at so unexpected a
deliverance. Grief and fear are easily described; sighs, tears,
groans, and a very few motions of the head and hands make up
the sum of its variety; but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy,
has a thousand extravagances in it. There were some in tears;
some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the
greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark-raving and downright
lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others
wringing their hands; some were dancing, some singing, some
laughing, more crying, many quite dumb, not able to speak a
word; others sick and vomiting; others swooning, and ready to
faint; and a few were crossing themselves, and giving God
thanks.

I would not wrong them neither; there might be many that
were thankful afterward, but the passion was too strong for them
at first, and they were not able to master it; they were thrown
into ecstasies and a kind of frenzy, and it was but a very few that
were composed and serious in their joy.

Perhaps the case may have some addition to it from the par
ticular circumstance of that nation they belonged to, I mean the
French, whose temper is allowed to be more volatile, more pas-
sionate, and more sprightly, and their spirits more fluid than in
other nations. I am not philosopher enough to determine the
cause; but nothing I had ever seen before came up to it. The
ecstasies poor Friday, my trusty savage, was in, when he found his
father in the boat, came the nearest to it; and the surprise of the
master and his two companions, whom I delivered from the villains
that set them on shore in the island, came a little way towards it ;
but nothing was to compare to this, either that I saw in Friday,
or anywhere else in my life.

It is further observable, that these extravagances did not show
themselves in that different manner I have mentioned in different
persons only, but all the variety would appear in a short suc-
cession of moments in one and the-same person. A man that we
saw this minute dumb, and, as it were, stupid and confounded,
should the next minute be dancing and hallooing like an antic;