Page:The land of fetish.pdf/176

 with him, and offer him a bribe for a counter-charm, as these people like to call it. When any vindictive savage has a grudge against a European, or against any one else, all he has to do to obtain revenge is to go to one of these poisoners, and, stating his wishes, pay a small sum of money, and the victim is then doomed to certain death, sometimes sudden and sometimes lingering, unless, in the latter case, he succeeds in discovering what is going on and outbids his secret enemy. Old residents in Sierra Leone and the Gambia know of several cases on record in which member after member of a family has wasted away and died of an unknown and inexplicable disease, and where the survivors have only been saved from a like doom by calling in one of these diabolical wretches. If native accounts may be believed, these poisoners are as well versed in their destructive study as were their kindred spirits in the age of Catherine de Medici; and, besides drugs which are deadly when placed in food or drink and taken into the stomach, know and use others which scattered about a room poison the atmosphere, or, sprinkled upon wearing apparel, cause death by absorption through the skin, and perfumes, to inhale which is fatal. The manner of compounding and preparing these poisons is preserved with great secrecy and mystery, and transmitted from father to