imagines that it is. But if the charm fails
to take hold of the mind of the proscribed person, another and more
certain expedient is resorted to--the secretly administering of poison
to him. This saves the reputation of the sorcerer, and effects the
purpose he had in view.

An OBEAH man or woman (for it is practised by both sexes) is a very
dangerous person on a plantation; and the practice of it is made felony
by law, punishable with death where poison has been administered, and
with transportation where only the charm has been used. But numbers
have, and may be swept off, by its infatuation, before the crime is
detected; for, strange as it may appear, so much do the negroes stand in
awe of those _Obeah_ professors, so much do they dread their malice and
their power, that, though knowing the havoc they have made, and are
still making, they are afraid to discover them to the whites; and,
others perhaps, are in league with them for sinister purposes of
mischief and revenge.

A negro, under the infatuation of Obeah, can only be cured of his
terrors by being made a Christian: refuse him this boon, and he sinks a
martyr to imagined evils. A negro, in short, considers himself as no
longer under the influence of this sorcery when he becomes a christian.
And instances are known of negroes, who, being reduced by the fatal
influence of Obeah to the lowest state of dejection and debility, from
which there were little hopes of recovery, have been surprisingly and
rapidly restored to health and cheerfulness by being baptized
christians. The negroes believe also in apparitions, and stand in great
dread of them, conceiving that they forbode death, or some other great
evil, to those whom they visit; in short, that the spirits of the dead
come upon the earth to be revenged on those who did them evil when in
life. Thus we see, that not only from the remotest antiquity, but even
among slaves and barbarians, the belief in supernatural agencies has
been a popular creed, not, in fact, confined to any distant race or
tribe of people; and, what is still more surprising, there is a singular
and most remarkable identity in the notion or conception of their
infernal ministry.

In the British West Indies, the negroes of the windward coast are called
_Mandingoes_, a name which is here taken as descriptive of a peculiar
race or nation. There seems reason, however, to believe, that a
_Mandingo_ or _Mandinga_-man, is properly the same with an Obi