By degrees these reports tickled my own curiosity to such a degree, that, incontinently, I armed myself with a quantity of cotton cloth, a brilliant bandanna, and a lot of tobacco, wherewith I resolved to attack the soothsayer's den. My credulity was not involved to the expedition, but I was sincerely anxious to comprehend the ingenuity or intelligence by which a negro could control the imagination of African multitudes. The wizard chose his abode with skilful and romantic taste. Quitting the town by a path which ascended abruptly from the river, the traveller was forced to climb the steep by a series of dangerous zig-zags among rocks and bushes, until he reached a deep cave in an elevated cliff that bent over the stream. As we approached, my conductor warned the inmate of our coming by several whoops. When we reached the entrance I was directed to halt until the demon announced his willingness to receive us. At length, after as much delay as is required in the antechamber of a secretary of state, a growl, like the cry of a hungry crocodile, gave token of the wizard's coming. As he emerged from the deep interior, I descried an uncommonly tall figure, bearing in his arms a young and living leopard. I could not detect a single lineament of his face or figure, for he was covered from head to foot in a complete dress of monkey skins, while his face was hidden by a grotesque white mask. Behind him groped a delicate blind boy. We seated ourselves on hides along the floor, when, at my bidding, the interpreter, unrolling my gifts, announced that I came with full hands to his wizardship, for the purpose of learning my fortune. The impostor had trained his tame leopard to fetch and carry like a dog, so that, without a word, the docile beast bore the various presents to his master. Every thing was duly measured, examined, or balanced in his hands to ascertain its quality and weight. Then, placing a bamboo between his lips and the blind boy's ear, he whispered the words which the child repeated aloud. First of all, he inquired what I wished to know? As one of his follower's boasts was the extraordinary power he possessed of speaking various languages, I addressed him in Spanish, but as his reply displayed an evident ignorance of what I said, I took the liberty to reprimand him sharply in his native tongue. He waved me off with an imperious flourish of his hand, and ordered me to wait, as he perfectly comprehended my Spanish, but the magic power would not suffer him to answer save in regular rotation, word by word. I saw his trick at once, which was only one of prompt and adroit _repetition_. Accordingly, I addressed him in his native dialect, and requested a translation of my sentence into Spanish. But this was a puzzler; though it required but a moment for him to assure me that a foreign language could only be spoken by wizards of his degree _at the full of the moon_!