58

• SOME place decoys, nor will they not avail,
• Replete with roasted crabs, in every grove
• These fell marauders gnaw; and pay their slaves
• Some small reward for every captive foe. [80]
• So practice Gallia’s sons; but Britons trust

• In other wiles; and surer their success.

• WITH Misnian arsenic,¹ deleterious bane,
• Pound up the ripe cassada’s² well-rasp’d root,
• And form in pellets; these profusely spread [85]
• Round the Cane-groves, where sculk the vermin-breed:
• They, greedy, and unweeting³ of the bait,
• Crowd to the inviting cates,⁴ and swift devour
• Their palatable Death; for soon they seek
• The neighbouring spring; and drink, and swell, and die. [90]
• But dare not thou, if life deserve thy care,
• The infected rivulet taste; nor let thy herds

neral, foul feeders, many of them greedily devouring the raw guts of fowls: They also feed on dead mules and horses; whose carcasses, therefore, should be buried deep, that the Negroes may not come at them. But the surest way is to burn them; otherwise they will be apt, privily, to kill those useful animals, in order to feast on them.

VER. 76. Nor thou their wayward] Pere Labat says that Cane-rats give those Negroes who eat them pulmonic disorders, but the good Jesuit was no physician. I have been told by those who have eat them, that they are very delicate food.

---