After studying the history of Hayti, one is not astonished that the fetish worship continues to flourish. The negroes imported from the west coast of Africa naturally brought their religion with them, and the worship of the serpent was one of its most distinguishing features. St. Méry speaks of the slaves arriving with a strange mixture of Mohammedanism and idolatry, to which they soon added a little Catholicism. Of Mohammedanism I have not myself observed a trace. When they found the large, almost harmless, serpent in Hayti, they welcomed it as their god, and their fetish priests soon collected their followers around them. The French authorities tried to put down all meetings of the Vaudoux, partly because they looked upon them as political, but they did not succeed in their object. Many of the tribes in Africa are to this day cannibals, and their ancestors imported probably this taste into the French colony. It was difficult at that epoch to indulge in it, as all the children of the slaves were carefully registered, and their disappearance would have been immediately remarked; they may, however, have made use of the expedients for producing apparent death, to which I will presently refer. Many persons appear to think that cannibalism is a later importation, and came with the Africans freed by our cruisers. If it were so, the seed fell on good ground, as the practice has spread to every district of the island. This opinion, however, can scarcely be correct, as Moreau de St. Méry, in naming the different tribes imported into Hayti, says:--“Never had any a disposition more hideous than the last (the Mondongues), whose depravity has reached the most execrable of excesses, that of eating their fellow-creatures. They bring also to Santo Domingo those butchers of human flesh (for in their country there are butcheries where they sell slaves as they would calves), and they are here, as in Africa, the horror of the other negroes.” This is a fitting introduction to the second part of this chapter, in which I must refer to the great knowledge of herbs as poisons and antidotes shown by the Papaloi--which, though possibly exaggerated by some inquirers, is no doubt very great--and to cannibalism as not connected with religious rites. In the following passages from Mr. Alvarez’s notes, the first impression will be that there must be gross exaggeration. I thought so when I first read them, but the more my inquiries extended, the less I was inclined to doubt them. If not exactly true, it is the firm belief of all classes of society that they are so. During thirteen years, I had the best opportunities of hearing the opinion of Presidents, intelligent Secretaries of State, the principal members of the medical profession, lawyers, merchants, both foreign and native, as well as other residents, who had passed a lifetime in the republic, and the testimony was more or less unanimous as to the profound knowledge of the use of herbs possessed by the Papaloi.