told me, by the bite of a
rattlesnake; he said he had been _cured_ from the bites of snakes by a
certain _curador de cobra_, or Mandingueiro, and had therefore not died;
but that as the 'moon was strong,' he had not escaped receiving some
injury from the bite."

Beaver, in his African Memoranda, says, "There is another sort of people
who travel about in the country, called Mandingo-men, (these are
Mahommedans;) they do not work; they go from place to place, and when
they find any chiefs or people, whom they think they can make anything
of, they take up their abode sometime with them, and make _gree-grees_,
and sometimes cast seed from them for which they make them pay."

On this, and other occasion, the word _gree-gree_ is applied to a house
whence oracles are delivered: but it is also used for a charm or obi.
"They themselves," (the natives of the coast) says the author, last
quoted, "always wear _gree-grees_, or charms, which they purchase of the
_Mandingoes_, to guard them against the effects of certain arms, or of
poison, and on which they place the utmost reliance. They have one
against poison; another against a musket; another against a sword; and
another against a knife; and, indeed, against almost every thing that
they think can hurt them. Mandingo priest, or _gris gris_ merchant, that
is, a seller of charms, which carried about a person, secure the wearer
from any evils,--such as poison, murder, witchcraft, etc. To this priest
I had made some handsome presents, and he, in return, gave me twelve
gris gris, and assured me that they would inevitably secure me from all
danger, at the same time he gave me directions how to dispose of them.
Some were to be carried about my person; one secretly placed over each
archway; another kept under my pillow, and another under the door of the
house I was then building." The Byugas hold these people in great
reverence, and say that they 'talk with God.'

Mr. Long, in his history of the West Indies, states that, under the
general name of Obi-men is also included the class of _Myal_ men, or
those who, by means of a narcotic poison, made with the juice of an herb
(said to be the branched Calalue, a species of solanum) which occasions
a trance of a certain duration, endeavour to convince the deluded
spectators of their power to reanimate dead bodies.

Additional particulars of this superstition preserved by Labat,
Edwards, and others, are to be joined with those now produced;[138