130 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS. 



throat, where twisting and hashing cannot shake the tor- 

 mentor off; and must be content to have himself lamed, 

 or his horses weakened to staggering and thrown out of 

 collar-work for a week, as I have seen happen more than 

 once or twice. The only method of keeping off the vampire 

 yet employed in stables is light ; and a lamp is usually kept 

 burning there. But the Negro not the most careful of men 

 is apt not to fill and trim it; and if it goes out in the 

 small hours, the horses are pretty sure to be sucked, if there 

 is a forest near. So numerous and troublesome, indeed, 

 are the vampires, that there are pastures in Trinidad in 

 wdiich, at least till the adjoining woods wxre cleared, the 

 cattle would not fatten, or even thrive ; being found, morning 

 after morning, weak and sick from the bleedings which they 

 had endured at night. 



After looking at the Coolie's toe, of which he made light, 

 though the bleeding from the triangular hole would not stop, 

 any more than that from the bite of a horse-leech, we feasted 

 our ears on the notes of delicate songsters, and our eyes on the 

 colours and shapes of the forest, which, rising on the opposite 

 side of the streams right and left, could be seen here more 

 thoroughly than at any spot 1 yet visited. Again and 

 again were the opera-glasses in requisition, to make out, 

 or ti'y to make out, what this or that tree might be. Here 

 and there a Norantea, a mile or two miles off, show^ed like a 



