Indeed, she insists they do not even understand the concept of sin. In short, the narrator reiterates again, the native people are very like the first biblical parents in the Garden of Eden living in "the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin" (3). The young woman, on the other hand, modestly guards her eyes and keeps them lowered. He sighs with love but never talks to her. Of course a man might be attracted to a woman, but he will only touch her with his eyes while his hands remain folded. "They are very modest and shy and despite living practically naked, there is never seen among them any improper or indecent behavior" (3). The native people with whom the Europeans trade, she says, are creative: "we dealt with them with beads of all colors, knives, axes, pins and needles." They wear beaded aprons "as Adam and Eve did the fig leaves." The people, she continues, are beautiful, their skin color a reddish yellow.
She describes a multitude of exotic tropical birds: "parakeets, great parrots, macaws, and a throusand other birds and beasts of wonderful and surprising forms, shapes and colors," as well as a wide variety of insects (2). But, before she tells the story of how this "gallant slave" came to be in this region of the world, she will provide an account of the people, the natives with whom the British live in "perfect peace," and will give a highly detailed description of this wondrous place (1). While she will not bore her readers with all the details concerning this amazing noble hero, she will nevertheless tell them everything about him that she, and her group of curious European friends, found fascinating about this prince before and after he arrived in Surinam ("in the West-Indies"). Whatever she did not personally observe, she maintains, was given to her as firsthand accounts by others who were there. The first word of Oronooko: or The History of the Royal Slave is "I"-the narrator-who claims to be "an eyewitness" to the true history of an intriguing hero.
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