box pierced with holes, and divided in two
horizontally by a movable tray. Below the tray he
placed his tabooed goods, above he coiled a
lively rattlesnake, then he locked and corded the
whole, and took it boldly to the frontier custom-
house.

" Anything to declare? Any tobacco?" said
the custom-house.

"No," said the Yankee, " only ' notions.'"

"Open the box," said the custom-house.

The Yankee handed the key.

Custom-house opened it with mechanical
quickness, and, starting back with a roar at
seeing the lifted mischievous hissing head of
the snake, clapped down the lid again and
slammed it with a click. There was no more
examination of that box at the custom-house.

The second story was more singular, and of
undoubted truth, for I verified it. It was a short
story of Southern jealousy. One day last June,
a smartly dressed mulatto woman came to the
Charleston post-oflice, and asked if there were
any letters from New Orleans for " Mrs. Delia
White." The postmaster, looking through the
grating, and then pausing to finish " a brandy
smash," as it was only " a coloured pusson,"
proceeded to slowly turn and shuffle, a pack of
New Orleans letters. Apparently without
success, for he shook his head and proceeded to nib
his pen.

"Mrs. Delia White ?" suddenly said the
second clerk, rising from some trifling with
a basin of " gumbo soup," for it was luncheon-
time; " why, that's the small parcel put up
there on the top shelf, because it was marked
with care. Care about coloured persons' things!
What next?" And here the energetic official
relapsed into his national soup.

Mrs. Delia retired to the post-office window
to open the present from her husband. The
coral necklace, the earrings, the what not!

"O Jerewsalem!"

That piercing shriek was from Mrs. Delia,
as she tore open the large yellow envelope
stamped with Washington's head stamps, and
found a lively little puff-adder, which fell from her
hands hissing and wriggling on the marble floor!

The little mischievous snake was instantly
killed by the alarmed clerks, excitable and easily
roused as Southerners usually are; and in gratitude
Mrs. Delia showed the handsomer clerk
of the two, her jealous husband's billet-doux..
It might have been written with poison, so
cruelly malicious were its contents. It ran thus:

"MY DEAREST DELIA, — The husband you
have forgotten sends you a dear nice little
present from New Orleans. Take it, Dody, and
kiss it for my sake."

Snake worship takes us back to the python,
and to the snakes that Mercury twined round
his caducous, to the snake that sipped at
Hygaea's bowl, and to the monsters that
offended Neptune, sent to slay Laocoon and
his children. It leads us on by the
Samothracian mysteries to Siva worship, and to
the snakes that the blood-stained Doorga of
Hindostan, brandishes in her thousand hands.
It bears us among the Northern snows, to the
great serpent of the Norse mythology that
smiles round the world, and which Thor baiting
his hook with a bull's head once went out fishing
for. It carries us to the Druids and their snake
stone amulets, and then away through countless
oak woods, through whose boughs the golden
sickle gleams ; to sandy Egypt, where the snake
figures again on the diadems of their ancient kings,
and as the emblem of eternity upon the solemn
tombs and temples. It is not for me here to
sum up German theories, and decide who first
of the race of Cain introduced the serpent as
the special emblem of evil, and the peculiar
object of honour in the obscene rites of Devil
worship. It is not for me to discuss whether
the serpent was selected by the sons of Cain in
open defiance of the Deity, or because the
snake had been selected by Satan as his most
favourite disguise ; or, whether it was merely
preferred as a general type of death and evil,
as more malignant, wily, and " subtle than any
beast of the field ;" for the same reason as
sacrifices of blood and fire were offered, as indicating
the dreadful attributes of the Prince of the
powers of the air. Yet, I can never find it in
my heart to rail at the devil worshippers— as
wilful worshippers of the bad— but rather
consider them as timid savages who, seeing a
terrible force of evil and death storming around
them, fell to deprecating the wrath of their
great evil principle.

Now, all this is à propos of the fact that snake
worship is still common in Hindostan and all
through Africa; will it startle our readers to
hear that it still prevails here and there among
the American negroes, especially among those
who have retained most of their African habits,
and among the more recent arrivals in the
slave steamers?

A remarkable instance of this occurred while
I was staying at New Orleans. That
luxurious city, so festive and riotous in the winter;
so deserted by all but slaves, death, and the
yellow fever, in summer; is a great depôt for
negroes. Here, stealing up the Mississippi at night,
come the steam slavers to unload their cargoes
of blacks in some wooded creek, intending
thence to pass them stealthily into the interior.
To New Orleans, stowed away in one way and
another, come in perpetually negroes from Cuba.
Here at the slave marts—boldly announced on
signboards—you see all day moping men and
women looking through the barred glass doors.
This is the city where poisons can be bought
from mysterious old negro women living in the
Bayous; and where jealous Creoles, quarrelling
with their paramours, can purchase the power
of killing them in a week, two months, or a
year, so subtle are these revengeful people in
the art of poisoning.

It was- in this city of strange contrasts, while
I was there, that some mischief was suspected
by the police to be brewing among the free negro
population, in the black quarter. The police,
armed as usual with revolver and cutlass, at a