[9] On the African coast the word is Vodun. Burton mentions that the serpents worshipped at Whydah were so respected that formerly to kill one by accident was punished by death. Now a heavy fine is inflicted. Bosman states that the serpent is the chief god in Dahomey, to whom great presents are made. They are harmless; white, yellow, and brown in colour, and the largest was about six feet long, and as thick as a man’s arm. Fergusson, in his introductory essay on “Tree and Serpent Worship in India,” mentions that at a place called Sheik Haredi, in Egypt, serpent-worship still continues, and that the priests sacrifice to them sheep and lambs. On the west coast of Africa, women, when touched by the serpent, are said to become possessed; they are seized with hysteria, and often bereft of reason; they are afterwards considered priestesses. The whole essay of Fergusson is exceedingly interesting.
[10] Red, the royal colour at Mdra.—Bosman.
[11] Burton, in his “Mission to the King of Dahomey,” notices that the fetish priests are a kind of secret police for the despotic king, and exercise the same influence as in Hayti. They are supposed to be able to give health, wealth, length of days, and can compass the destruction of the applicant’s foes, all for a fee. Bosman, in his account of the slave coast of Guinea, says that a negro who offered opposition to the priests was poisoned by them, and became speechless and paralysed in his limbs; and that if any woman betrays the secrets of the priests, she is burnt to death.
[12] Barbot states that the common food of the natives of the kingdom of Ansiko (west coast of Africa) is man’s flesh, insomuch that their markets are provided with it, as ours in Europe with beef and mutton. All prisoners of war, unless they can sell them alive to greater advantage, they fatten for slaughter, and at last sell them to butchers to supply the markets, and roast them on spits, as we do other meat (date 1700).—Churchill’s Collection, vol. v. p. 479. Barbot also notices that the people of Jagos, Congo, and Angola were also cannibals.
[13] Barbot, in his account of the Ansiko kingdom, says: “That which is most inhuman is, that the father makes no difficulty to eat the son, nor the son the father, nor one brother the other; and whosoever dies, be the disease ever so contagious, yet they eat the flesh immediately as a choice dish.”—Barbot, in Churchill’s Collection, vol. v. p. 479.
[14] I may here notice that the Haytians have chosen the mountain cabbage-palm (Palma nobilis) as the tree of liberty in the national arms. It is in nature a beautiful palm, with its dark-green foliage and perfect shape. The cap of liberty stuck on the top of it makes it look rather ludicrous, and the arms around its base are not very appropriate to so unmilitary a people.
[15] “Nous ne sommes plus aux temps où quelques rares curés, repartis dans les principales paroisses de la république faisaient d’énormes bénéfices par des moyens souvent hélas reprouvés par la conscience et par les lois de l’église.... Qu’ai-je besoin d’évoquer dans le passé les lamentables souvenirs de l’église en Haïti. Je suis prêtre, et je voudrais pour l’honneur du sacerdoce pouvoir laver son opprobre de mes larmes et de les plonger dans un éternel oubli. Mais il ne dépend ni de moi ni de personne d’en effacer la triste mémoire.”—Monseigneur A. Guilloux, Archbishop of Port-au-Prince.
[16] “Ne suffit-il pas d’ailleurs de parcourir les villes et les bourgades de la république pour rencontrer encore les témoins vivants d’un libertinage sans exemple.”—Guilloux.
[17] Military trials have always been a disgrace to Hayti. Even under their model President Boyer (1827) they were as bad as they were under the Emperor Soulouque or the present President Salomon. Mackenzie, in his notes on Hayti, states that no defence was allowed, as that would have been waste of time. Four officers were tried and condemned to death: their arms were tied, and they were led by a police officer to the place of execution. They showed great intrepidity, though the soldiers fired a hundred shots before they killed them. President Geffrard had certainly more respect for the forms of law.
[18] Mackenzie tells a story of a town-adjutant calling on him in gorgeous uniform; he next met him cooking the dinner of his host.