THE VAMPIRE. 71 
on account of the smaller vampire; and that the 
larger kind were killing his poor ass by inches. It 
was the only quadruped he had brought up with him 
into the forest. 
Although I was so long in Dutch Guiana, and 
visited the Orinoco and Cayenne, and ranged through 
part of the interior of Portuguese Guiana, still I 
could never find out how the vampires actually draw 
the blood ; and, at this day, I am as ignorant of the , 
real process as though I had never been in the vam- 
pire’s country. I should not feel so mortified at my 
total failure in attempting the discovery, had I not 
made such diligent search after the vampire, and 
examined its haunts. Europeans may consider as 
fabulous the stories related of the vampire; but, for 
my own part, I must believe in its powers of sucking 
blood from living animals, as I have repeatedly seen 
both men and beasts which had been sucked, and, 
moreover, I have examined very minutely their 
bleeding wounds. 
Wishful of having it in my power to say that I had 
been sucked by the vampire, and not caring for the 
loss of ten or twelve ounces of blood, I frequently 
and designedly put myself in the way of trial. But 
the vampire seemed: to take a personal dislike to 
me; and the provoking brute would refuse to give 
my claret one solitary trial, though he would tap the 
more favoured Indian’s toe, in a hammock within a 
few yards of mine. For the space of eleven months, 
I slept alone in the loft of a woodcutter’s abandoned 
house in the forest; and though the vampire came 
in and out every night, and I had the finest oppor- 
F 4 
