THE VAMPIRE. 235 



wing to wing extended, though I once killed one which measured 

 thirty-two inches. He frequents old abandoned houses and hollow 

 trees ; and sometimes a cluster of them may be seen in the forest 

 hanging head downwards from the branch of a tree. 



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 vampire'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. 



Some years ago I went to the river Paumaron with a Scotch 

 gentleman, by name Tarbet. We hung our hammocks in the 

 thatched loft of a planter's house. Next morning I heard this 

 gentleman muttering in his hammock, and now and then letting fall 

 an imprecation or two, just about the time he ought to have been 

 saying his morning prayers. "What is the matter, sir?" said I, 

 softly j " is there anything amiss ? " " What 's the matter !" answered 

 he, surlily; "why, the vampires have been sucking me to death." 

 As soon as there was light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw 

 it much stained with blood. " There ! " said he, thrusting his foot 

 out of the hammock, " see how these infernal imps have been drawing 

 my life's blood." On examining his foot, I found the vampire had 

 tapped his great toe ; there was a wound somewhat less than that 

 made by a leech ; the blood was still oozing from it ; I conjectured 

 he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of blood. Whilst 

 examining it, I think I put him into a worse humour by remarking, 

 that a European surgeon would not have been so generous as to 

 have blooded him without making a charge. He looked up in my 

 face, but did not say a word : I saw that he was of opinion that I 

 had better have spared this piece of ill-timed levity. 



Wishful of having it in my power to say that I had been sucked 



