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Updated: May 7, 2025
In another place, some traveller presents us with the Mandingueiros in the new character of charmer of snakes. "The Mandingueiros are famous, among other feats, for handling poisonous snakes, and can, by particular noises or tunes, call those reptiles from their holes, and make them assemble around them.
"These men," says he, "wore on their necks strings of green beads, which had either come from the coast of Africa, bearing the wonderful property of conveying in safety their possessors through all descriptions of perils, or were charmed by the Mandingueiros, African sorcerers, who had been brought over to the Brazils as slaves, and in secret continued the prohibited practice of imparting this virtue to them.
The owner of the snake repeats a certain number of words during the operation, of which, the meaning, if they contain any, is only known to the initiated. The rattle-snake is said to be, above all other species, the most susceptible of attention to the tunes of the Mandingueiros."
The above accounts I should not have related upon the authority of one or two authors, I have heard them repeated by several individuals, and even some men of education have spoken of the reputed efficacy of the tame snakes of the Mandingueiros, as if they were somewhat staggered in their belief of it. "These men do certainly play strange tricks and very dexterously."
"I was informed," says our author, "that Contas verdas came from Africa; but some have found their way from the Orellana, and been put into requisition by the Mandingueiros." Mr. Southey has also given an account of the "green stones of the Amazons," in his history of Brazil, vol. 1. p. 107.
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