274 TREACHERY OF BOUBOU, THE AUTHORS HOST. 
Weary of waiting^ for the death of a man whose property he 
coveted, a death too slow for his desires, he went out one day 
and ordered a fowl, into which he put poison, to be carried 
to me. The disagreeable smell of the broth and its red 
colour, prevented me from taking more than two spoonfuls. 
The effects of the poison, although badly prepared, soon 
produced excruciating pains in the stomach. Boukari, who 
had merely put his lips to the broth to taste it, suffered in the 
same way. The marks of attachment which Boubou had 
lavished upon mo would not allow me to attribute the pains 
which I felt to poison ; I imputed the cause to ^ hunger. 
Boukari having given me milk to appease it, I was enabled 
to judge of the danger to which my life had been exposed, by 
the vomiting which it occasioned. Having sent for the 
wife of Boubou, and questioned her, she exculpated herself 
by saying, that in mistake she had dressed the fowl in a vessel 
in which she had just before been boiling herbs to cure the 
cholic. An unexpected circumstance unveiled the imposture 
of this woman ; the fowl had been thrown into the road, and 
a slave who ate part of it, was at the point of death in the 
evening ; on being informed of this accident, it was no longer 
possible to doubt that my host had attempted my life. An 
expression which escaped him, and which was reported to me, 
completely convinced me of this dreadful truth. Boubou 
had said to one of his friends : " I must not be out of the way, 
for I know that in a few hours the white man must expire." 
