."

FOOTNOTES:

[132] The berries of the belladonna or deadly nightshade, produce, when
eaten, a furious madness, followed by sleep, which lasts for twenty-four
hours. Such drugs as produce mental stupefaction, without impairing the
physical powers, may have given rise to the accounts of men being
transformed into brutes, so frequent in what are denominated the
fabulous writers, while the evanescent but exquisite joys of an opposite
description, an anticipation of what implicit obedience would ensure
them for ever, produced blind, furious, devoted adherents to any
philosophical speculator, who would venture to try so desperate an
experiment.

[133] The Rowan tree or Mountain ash, is used by the Scottish peasantry
with the same view; and a small twig of it is sewed up in the cow's
tail, to preserve the animal and its produce from the influence of
witches and warlocks.

[134] See Pharmacologia, by Dr. Paris.

[135] Vide "Amenetates Academicae," vol. 4.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PRACTICE OF OBEAH, OR NEGRO WITCHCRAFT--CHARMS--THEIR KNOWLEDGE OP
VEGETABLE POISONS--SECRET POISONING.

Obeah, a pretended sort of witchcraft, arising from a superstitious
credulity, prevailing among the negroes, has ever been considered as a
most dangerous practice, to suppress which, in our West India colonies,
the severest laws have been enacted. The Obeah is considered as a potent
and most irresistible spell, withering and paralyzing, by indiscribable
terrors and unusual sensations, the devoted victim. One negro who
desires to be revenged on another, and is afraid to make an open and
manly attack on his adversary, has usually recourse to this practice.
Like the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, it is a combination of many
strange and ominous things. Earth gathered from a grave, human blood, a
piece of wood fastened in the shape of a coffin, the feathers of the
carion crow, a snake or alligator's tooth, pieces of egg-shell, and
other nameless ingredients, compose the fatal mixture. The whole of
these articles may not be considered as absolutely necessary to complete
the charm, but two or three are at least indispensable.[136]

It will of course be conceived, that the practice of OBEAH can have
little effect, unless a negro is conscious that it is practised upon
him, or thinks so;[137] for, as the whole evil consists in the terrors of
a superstitious imagination, it is of little consequence whether it be
practised or not, if he only