s from the house of a Portuguese
Negro, a known Obeah-man. Fearing that murder was being done, they
burst open his door, and found that he had tied up his wife hand and
foot, and was flogging her horribly. They cut the poor creature
down, and placed her in safety.

A day or two after, the missionary's servant came in at sunrise with
a mysterious air.

'You no go out just now, massa.'

There was something in the road: but what, he would not tell. My
friend went out, of course, in spite of the faithful fellow's
entreaties; and found, as he expected, a bottle containing the usual
charms, and round it--sight of horror to all Negroes of the old
school--three white cocks' heads--an old remnant, it is said, of a
worship 'de quo sileat musa'--pointing their beaks, one to his door,
one to the door of each of his friends. He picked them up,
laughing, and threw them away, to the horror of his servant.

But the Obeah-man was not so easily beaten. In a few days the
servant came in again with a wise visage.

'You no drink a milk to-day, massa.'

'Why not?'

'Oh, perhaps something bad in it. You give it a cat.'

'But I don't want to poison the cat!'

'Oh, dere a strange cat in a stable; me give it her.'

He did so; and the cat was dead in half an hour.

Again the fellow tried, watching when the three white men, as was
their custom, should dine together, that he might poison them all.
And again the black servant foiled him, though afraid to accuse him
openly. This time it was--'You no drink a water in a filter.' And
when the filter was searched, it was full of poison-leaves.

A third attempt the rascal made with no more success; and then
vanished from Sierra Leone; considering--as the Obeah-men in the
West Indies are said to hold of the Catholic priests--that 'Buccra
Padre's Obeah was too strong for his Obeah.'

I know not how true the prevailing belief is, that some of these
Obeah-men carry a drop of snake's poison under a sharpened finger-
nail, a scratch from which is death. A similar story was told to
Humboldt of a tribe of Indians on the Orinoco; and the thing is
possible enough. One story, which seemingly corroborates it, I
heard, so curiously illustrative of Negro manners in Trinidad during
the last generation, that I shall give it at length. I owe it--as I
do many curious facts--to the kindness of Mr. Lionel Fraser, chief
of police of the Port of Spain, to whom it was tol