Extracts from Dr. TVinterboltorrf 's Travels. 



relates that by merely dipping their thumb in water, which 

 they offer as a beverage to the object of their revenge, 

 they infuse a slow, but certain death. 



There is another strange practice, which the Europeans 

 accuse the Africans of, which, however, as there can be no 

 real foundation for it, is wrapped up in much mystery and 

 obscurity. It is said they cause the body of any person 

 to swell to a prodigious size, by only blowing upon them, 

 this is sometimes done in so secret a manner, so as not to be 

 observed by the injured party, at other times by blowing 

 a certain substance through a long tube across the path of 

 the traveller. There may indeed be some foundation for the 

 latter, as the natives of Guiana are known to blow through 

 a tube six feet long, a kind of small splinter dart dipped in 

 poison called worrara. It is probable if these arrows possess 

 the poisonous properties attributed to them, that the whole 

 story of blowing is only founded upon idle report, and sur- 

 mises formed from the most superstitious conjectures. 



The principal hinderance of improvement and obstruc- 

 tion of all civilization to the Africans, seems to arise chiefly 

 from two causes, the one for want of a full and due commu- 

 nication with Europe, and the too-free intercourse with the 

 Arabs or Mahommedans. The Negroes can have no desire 

 to cultivate the knowledge or arts of more refined countries, 

 until habit and experience convince them of their own 

 inferiority, and as they can have no favorable opinion of 

 virtue and knowledge going hand in hand in the traffick 

 or examples which they have had before their eyes, in all 

 European countries, they naturally remain in the same 

 superstitious bigotted state, without conviction or the free 

 exercise of their reason. 



