But there was another old slave in that neighborhood, who professed to understand all about conjuration, and I thought I would try his skill.  He told me that the first one was only a quack, and if I would only pay him a certain amount in cash, that he would tell me how to prevent any person from striking me.  After I had paid him his charge, he told me to go to the cow-pen after night, and get some fresh cow manure, and mix it with red pepper and white people’s hair, all to be put into a pot over the fire, and scorched until it could be ground into snuff.  I was then to sprinkle it about my master’s bed-room, in his hat and boots, and it would prevent him from ever abusing me in any way.  After I got it all ready prepared, the smallest pinch of it scattered over a room, was enough to make a horse sneeze from the strength of it; but it did no good.  I tried it to my satisfaction.  It was my business to make fires in my master’s chamber, night and morning.  Whenever I could get a chance, I sprinkled a little of this dust about the linen of the bed, where they would breathe it on retiring.  This was to act upon them as what is called a kind of love powder, to change their sentiments of anger, to those of love, towards me, but this all proved to be vain imagination.  The old man had my money, and I was treated no better for it.

One night when I went in to make a fire, I availed myself of the opportunity of sprinkling a very heavy charge of this powder about my master’s bed.  Soon after their going to bed, they began to cough and sneeze.  Being close around the house, watching and listening, to know what the effect would be, I heard them ask each other what in the world it could be, that made them cough and sneeze so.  All the while, I was trembling with fear, expecting every moment I should be called and asked if I knew any thing about it.  After this, for fear they might find me out in my dangerous experiments upon them, I had to give them up, for the time being.  I was then convinced that running away was the most effectual way by which a slave could escape cruel punishment.

As all the instrumentalities which I as a slave, could bring to bear upon the system, had utterly failed to palliate my sufferings, all hope and consolation fled.  I must be a slave for life, and suffer under the lash or die.  The influence which this had only tended to make me more unhappy.  I resolved that I would be free if running away could make me so.  I had heard that Canada was a land of liberty, somewhere in the North; and every wave of trouble that rolled across my breast, caused me to think more and more about Canada, and liberty.  But more especially after having been flogged, I have fled to the highest hills of the forest, pressing my way to the North for refuge; but the river Ohio was my limit.  To me it was an impassable gulf.  I had no rod wherewith to smite the stream, and thereby divide the waters.  I had no Moses to go before me and lead the way from