But what they wanted specially to find was the skeleton of a certain rival Obeah-man, who having, some years before, rashly challenged Madame to a trial of skill, had gone to visit her one night, and never left her cottage again.
The chief centre of this detestable system is St.Vincent, where--so I was told by one who knows that island well--some sort of secret College, or School of the Prophets Diabolic, exists.

Its emissaries spread over the islands, fattening themselves at the expense of their dupes, and exercising no small political authority, which has been ere now, and may be again, dangerous to society.

In Jamaica, I was assured by a Nonconformist missionary who had long lived there, Obeah is by no means on the decrease; and in Hayti it is probably on the increase, and taking--at least until the fall and death of Salnave--shapes which, when made public in the civilised world, will excite more than mere disgust.

But of Hayti I shall be silent; having heard more of the state of society in that unhappy place than it is prudent, for the sake of the few white residents, to tell at present.
The same missionary told me that in Sierra Leone, also, Obeah and poisoning go hand in hand.

Arriving home one night, he said, with two friends, he heard hideous screams from the house of a Portuguese Negro, a known Obeah-man.