The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-02-10
The Power of obenh.

IHe lolloWllS IS dll lHSlaHee or what MT. Hesketh J. Bell saw with his own eyes in the British colony of Grenada, one of the Windward islands.
 A planter had in his grounds a fine lot of two thousand plantalns, but could never get bunch of the fruit for the table. The "wretched niggers" of the neighborhood always walked off with it as quickly as it ripened. As neither watchman nor spring guns had any ef- feet in checking the depredations, he determined to have the garden dressed by an Obeah man.
 Accordingly one day he was by ap- pointment waited upon by wizened old African, attended by small black boy carrying a large covered basket. Mokombo, on being told what was wanted, promised:
 "Me go set strong Obeah for dem, and dey nebber go tief your plantain again." Instructed to go to work, Mo- kombo took up his basket and went down among the trees, which were planted in long rows in a large field. The plantain is much the same as the banana-the fruit growing in enormous
 punches out of a soft fieshy trunk, the leaves on which spread out like those of a palm.
 This is what the Obeah man pro- ceeded to do: Out of his basket he took
 a number of large and small medicine
 bottles filled with some mysterious liquid; then taking up a. position in front of a plantain, he tied one of the
 bottles on to bunch of the fruit, nut
 tering the while an incantation in some
 African lingo, completing the spell by frequent genufections and waving of
 the arms. He went through all the rows in the same fashion. When he had
 used up his stock of bottles he took from his basket small black wooden coffin. This he placed with good deal of ceremony in the branches of a cocoa tree and on the top of the coffin he put
 a saucer containing a little water with a hens egg floating in it. He then walked right around the field, mutter- ing his incantation and waving his arms, after which he came to the plan ter and declared that the Obeah was complete-not another bunch of plan- tains would be stolen. Receiving his fee he departed, saying: Me let go plenty cribo, massa, and now if any ! da go and tief dem plantains he must go swell up and bustn
 Criboes are large black serpents, very common in the island, but quite harm less. The planters, indeed, rather pro- l tect them, as they wage war on the rats. | These criboes, however. are supposed to l become deadly under the influence of 1 the Obeah man, and the negroes believe l that when he ''dresses' a garden or field, he sets free in it a swarm of fero- cious criboes, who will assuredly de- stroy anybody who goes into the place for the purpose of stealing. They know
 we'll enough that there is 10 venomous
 snake in the island, yet the African | dread and veneration of the serpent is
 ineradicable.
 On the particular occasion referred to the bottles were examined after Mo-
 kombo's departure, and found to con- tain nothing but sea water, colored with a little laundry blue, with a dead cock roach floating on the top. Some of them had also a few rusty nails, or a 1 bit of red flannel. But there might be any sort of rubbish in the mystic bot
 ties, for no negro would dare touch | them. Nor would he go near the trees
 on which they were hung, to steal,
 unless he was prepared to swell up and
 bust.' All the teaching of Christian ministers and schoolmasters for fifty
 years has not been able to destroy the dark superstitions brought over with | the lcargoes of slaves from the African coast during the previous two centur-
 ies-Chamber's Journal.