; if, as is probable, he has remained--to his great
misfortune--till the last three hundred years isolated on that vast
island of Central Africa, which has probably continued as dry land
during ages which have seen the whole of Europe, and Eastern and
Southern Asia, sink more than once beneath the sea: then it is
possible, and even probable, that during these long ages of the
Negro's history, creed after creed, ceremonial after ceremonial, may
have grown up and died out among the different tribes; and that any
worship, or quasi-worship, which may linger among the Negroes now,
are likely to be the mere dregs and fragments of those older
superstitions.

As a fact, Obeah is rather to be ranked, it seems to me, with those
ancient Eastern mysteries, at once magical and profligate, which
troubled society and morals in later Rome, when

'In Tiberim defluxit Orontes.'

If so, we shall not be surprised to find that a very important,
indeed the most practically important element of Obeah, is
poisoning. This habit of poisoning has not (as one might well
suppose) sprung up among the slaves desirous of revenge against
their white masters. It has been imported, like the rest of the
system, from Africa. Travellers of late have told us enough--and
too much for our comfort of mind--of that prevailing dread of poison
as well as of magic which urges the African Negroes to deeds of
horrible cruelty; and the fact that these African Negroes, up to the
very latest importations, are the special practisers of Obeah, is
notorious through the West Indies. The existence of this trick of
poisoning is denied, often enough. Sometimes Europeans, willing to
believe the best of their fellow-men--and who shall blame them?--
simply disbelieve it because it is unpleasant to believe.
Sometimes, again, white West Indians will deny it, and the existence
of Obeah beside, simply because they believe in it a little too
much, and are afraid of the Negroes knowing that they believe in it.
Not two generations ago there might be found, up and down the
islands, respectable white men and women who had the same half-
belief in the powers of an Obeah-man as our own ancestors,
especially in the Highlands and in Devonshire, had in those of
witches: while as to poisoning, it was, in some islands, a matter
on which the less said the safer. It was but a few years ago that
in a West Indian city an old and faithful free servan