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 



