“The swiftest Su no liberty can lack
That bears her sprightly offspring on her back.”
ll. 80-81
Wild Beast in the New-found World called Su. 1658. Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. University of Houston Digital Library. Web. August 22, 2013. https://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/p15195coll18/item/28.
A depiction of the su from Edward Topsell’s The History of four-footed beasts and serpents (London, 1658). Topsell claims that this “cruel, untameable, impatient, violent, ravening, and bloudy beast” (p. 511) inhabits the New World and that “when the hunters that desire her skin set upon her, she flyeth very swift, carrying her young ones upon her back, and covering them with her broad tail” (p. 511).
Rebekah King