The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-28
"HORSE FOOT DAVE.o
Ills Experience With VOudOo Incanta- tfons, and Why Ills Corpse Did Not Go to frica

GO tO AIflCa.
 An odd character among the Sound fishermen at the Thmble Islands, says writer in the Hartford Times, is Da- vid Quash, better known as Horse Foot Dave" who was born in Hayt
 He is a snowy headed and venerable colored man, who is proud of the fact that he is now an American citizen and the owner of the Oriole, one of the trimmest little oyster dredging sloops in the Guilford fleet. He is good story teller, and hence it will be readily seen that he easily becomes a popular man among the Watermen wherever he goes. For many years engaged in oyster dredging at the head of Long Island Sound, he first made his appearance in Connecticut waters shortly after the civil war, on an unusual errand. He came on a mission from manufactur- ing jeweler in New York to secure supply of young horse-foot crabs, those odd-shaped, spiketailed inoffensive, and when fully grown, bulky crustacea. The jeweler desired large number of the smallest specimens of this clumsy creature to be had, to be used as mod els for reproduction in silver for deco rative purposes. While Quash was carrying out the undertaking he cooked and ate some of the large horse-feet, and liked them so much that now he makes pilgrimage down the Sound to Saybrook and Giants Neck every spring and catches part of sloop load of the strange-looking creatures, which he keeps for use on the Orioles table His love for horse-foot crabs, which are not usually eaten won for him the sobriquet by which he is commonly known.
 WAS NOT BURIED ALIVE.
 Quash believes he is the only person in America who owes his life to the practice of Voudoosm He declares nothing but the delays resulting from the ceremonies attending the obser- vance of that form of superstition pre- vented him from having been buried alive. In his early days he was a fa- vorite hand on sugar plantation in the Blue Hills near Port au Prince, and be- cause of his strength and skill he was made head cooper before he was twen- ty years of age. While at work one day in cane mill he was knocked down by lever. and lay so long in a state of l
 
 was dead, and preparations were made | to give him wake after the Voudoo fashion.
 "Yis, sah!" said Quash in telling the story. the other day; my cullud friends wanted to do de bery best ting for me, which was to sing around my body untell de morning star rose, and | den bury mo. Dat was sos to bear me to Africa where de Fetish would glib me power ober de ebil spirit An all de time I knowed eberything dat was go- ing on, but I couldn't move a lip, nor say d word, cniic.
 SCENE AT THE WAKE.
 On the night of the last rites, during the blackeSt hours of the morning. Quash's body was brought out of the cabin and placed in an open coffin by the side of a grave which old Hannibal, T half naked colorcd man. had just fin ished digging. A large torch of pitch pine. blazing brightly, was stuck in the ground at the head of the coffin, anoth- ar at the foot of it, and others about the grave, giving q flaring, urcanny glare to the scene. Then the voudoo singers ( look their places about the bier. There were nearly tWoseore of colored women seated near the grave on the ground. { Nearer to the supposed corpse and also , sitting on the ground were three men { at intervals upon drums,