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The most common arts of the sorcerers are said to be going 
out at night, to wander among the rocks and tombs, and to 
associate with the owls and wild cats. What they do there 
is not so obvious; but the watchmen who catch and beat them 
declare that they play with those detested creatures, and give 
them food; others alleging that the wild animals, on the con- 
trary, serve as a meal to the bewitched persons, who convey 
them home, and eat them under cover of the night; or that, like 
Lord Byron’s Vampyre, they haunt the tombs to feast on the 
corpses. It is universally allowed that a strong charm (ody- 
mahery) is obtained from the owls and wild cats, by the con- 
tact or proximity of which the human race is enchanted and 
destroyed, and the real fact is probably that some persons do 
practise the giving of poison, which is thus gratuitously 
ascribed to sorcery. These enchanters are deemed utter mis- 
anthropists, delighting in human sufferings, and frequenting 
the tombs to triumph over the dead. They aim only at occa- 
sioning disease and destruction ;—misery is their sphere of 
existence, which they only live to produce, and in which they 
delight. An invincible fatality or fascination compels them to 
. this conduct, from which they often, but vainly, desire a re- 
lease. The power of enchantment is derivable from ancestors, 
relatives, or friends, and once obtained can never be resigned, 
nor its practice abjured; but wherever the possessed indivi- 
duals go, they infallibly seek to bewitch, poison, and destroy. 
They cast a spell over persons, riches, and possessions, turn 
prosperity into adversity, embitter all the joys of their victims, 
and cause every thing to yield but disease, sorrow, and death, 
A common act of the sorcerers is to poison the water in the 
pitcher used by an entire family, and thus occasion wholesale 
destruction; or less frequently to occasion such a wide-spread- 
ing disease as shall affect the whole nation. Such is their 
conduct, in which they are supposed to persevere, till death 
arrests the career of its over-zealous servants, and puts a stop 
to its own ravages, ‘There is no limit assigned to the power 
of sorcery; every evil which the Malagassy feel or fear, which 
they understand, or do not understand, is ascribed to its in- 
fluence. The reason assigned for the universal administra- 
