142 THE NOnTUEUN MOUNTAIXS. 



" Oil, tlere a strange cat in a stal)le ; me give it her." 



He did so ; and tlie cat was dead in half an hour. 



Again the fellow tried, watching when the three white 

 men, as was their custom, should dine together, that he 

 might poison them all. And again the Llack servant foiled 

 him, though afraid to accuse him openly. This time it 

 was " You no drink a water in a filter." And when the 

 filter was searched, it was full af poison-leaves. 



A third attempt the rascal made with no more success ; 

 and then vanished from Sierra Leone ; considering as the 

 Obeah-men in the West Indies are said to hold of the 

 Catholic priests that " Buccra Padre's Qheah was too strong 

 for his Obeali." 



I know not how true the prevailing belief is, that some 

 of these Obeah-men carry a drop, of snake's poison under a 

 sharpened finger-nail, a scratch from which is death. A 

 similar story was told to Humboldt of a tribe of Indians 

 on the Orinoco ; and the thing is possible enough. One 

 story, which seemingly corroborates it, I heard, so curi- 

 ously illustrative of Negro manners in Trinidad during the 

 last generation, that I shall give it at length. I owe it 

 as I do many curious facts to the kindness of Mr. Lionel 

 Fraser, chief of j)olice of the Port of Spain, to whom it was 



told, as it here stands, by the late Mr. E , stipendiary 



magistrate ; himself a Creole and a man of colour : 



