In the year 1780, the parish of Westmoreland was kept in a constant state of alarm by a runaway negro called Plato, who had established himself among the mountains and collected a troop of banditti, of which he was the chief. He robbed very often and murdered occasionally. This could not be allowed, and at last Plato was taken and condemned to death. He told the magistrates who condemned him that his death would be revenged by a storm which would lay waste the whole island that year, and when his negro jailer was binding him to the stake--he was evidently burned to death according to the ruthless custom of the time--he told him he should not live long to triumph in his death, for that he had taken good care to Obeah him before quitting prison. It certainly did happen, strangely enough, says Matthew Lewis, that before the year was over there was the most violent storm ever known in Jamaica, and as for that jailer, “his imagination was so forcibly struck by the threats of the dying man, that although every care was taken of him, the power of medicine exhausted, and even a voyage to America undertaken in hopes that a change of scene might change the course of his ideas, still from the moment of Plato's death he gradually pined and withered away before the completion of the twelvemonth.” Now that was written of 1780, but the very morning I wrote it, 7th March 1921 on Kempshot Pen, came a stalwart negro to see Miss Maxwell Hall, and to discuss local politics with her. “And how is it,” asked the young lady, “Daniel Cooper is such a bad man now? He won't work and he thieves.” “Missus,” said the cultivator solemnly, “we sorry for him. Can't blame Daniel Cooper. Him can't help it. Him put so. When I go to Cuba him good boy”--the gentleman was over forty even then--“an' when I come back dat Charles Henry put him so. Dat bad man Charles Henry. Make him tief, make him lie, put him so.” So Daniel Cooper, idle scamp, for some unknown reason is to be pitied not blamed, because it is a well-known fact that Charles Henry is an Obeah man. Obeah is a very real and live thing in the mountains round Montego Bay. But Miss Maxwell Hall has decreed that the gentleman who has been “put so,” whether he is to be pitied or blamed, shall not come on her land. She will not encourage Obeah. There was another case, a well-known case some years ago. A woman with two sons got leave to take up land on Kempshot. She put the boys to clear it, and as they worked a man came and said she could not have it. Her husband, who was dead, owed him twenty pounds, and he was taking the land instead. Everyone knew it was a lie, he never had twenty pounds to lend anybody. But as the boys worked he warned them. “You come back after dinner, see what happen to you.” But they laughed and came back. “You no come to-morrow,” threatened the man, and sure enough next day both boys were ill, and while one died the other has been an idiot ever since.