A CANNIBAL MARKET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7222, 10 January 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CANNIBAL MARKET.

The terrible subject of cannibalism is brought before us in sombre colours in a volume entitled " Hayti, or The Black Republic," from the pen of Sir Spenser St. John, formerly British Resident and ConsulGeneral at Port-au-Prince, which is just published by Smiih, Elder, and Co. Popular notions of the portion of the fertile island of Santo Domingo to which Sir Spenser St. John's researches relate are of a somewhat mixed kind. The poetry of Wordsworth and the prose and poetry of Lamartiue and the romance of Miss Martiueaa have invested with a strong romantic interest the story of the brave Toussainfi l'Ouverture and the rising of the blacks against the domination of the French under the revolutionary ideas of 1793. Among the victims of the meanness and cruelty of the First Napoleon, few perhaps have awakened more general sympathy than this gallant and enlightened defender of the liberties of the coloured race, of which he was so remarkable a specimen. Since hi 3 days Hayti has been , notorious for its ridiculous parodies of the revolutions and coups d'ctats of France and Spain. But revolutions are events too common to excite any special feeling of horror. It is otherwise with Sir Spenser St. John's revelations on the subject of the habits and customs of the people of this portion of Santo Domingo, the largest and most fertile next to Cuba of all the West India Islands. liayti came under the government of the French iu 1677, not many years after the neighbouring islands of Jamaica had passed into the possession of our country, and » French colony it continued for considerably more than a century afterwards. It now possesses a Government modelled on that of France, with a President, Senate, and House of Representatives, with Secretaries of State, Prefects, Judges, and all the details of courts of justice and police. It has, moreover, a Press, more or less free, and an archbishop, bishops, and inferior clergy, nearly all Frenchmen. That the Haytiang can, after more than two centuries of close association with civilised European races, continue to practice cannibalism is a fact difficult to be conceived. But the author of this book has lived for twelve years in familiar intercourse with Hay Hans of all ranks and shades of colour. The subject cannot bo fully understood without reference to that of Vaudoux, or serpent worship, which, with all its horrible rites, appears to be widely spread among the people. A striking evidence of this is furnished by the ghastly details brought to light in the course of the trial of eight prisoners—four men and four women— who in 1864, under the Presidency of General Geffrard, described as the most enlightened ruler which the country has possessed since the time of President Boyer, were convicted of tho murder of a girl who bad been sacrificed in the supreme rite of tho Vaudoux worship, euphoniously known as that of the "goat without horns." Sir .Spenser St. John was present at these trials, when the skull and other remains were produced in court, and overwhelming evidence was furnished that tho persons present at the sacrifice, of whom fourteen were originally arrested, partook on two occasions of the flesh of the victim. No less ippalling are the evidences that, apart from the hideous banquets which form part of those terriblo mysteries, there is a section of the community who systematically feed upon human flesh. The fearful legends of the "ghoul" and the "wehr-wolf" finds almost a literal counterpart in the examples which Sir Spenser St. John is able to cite from the testimony of sober witnesses. A lady, the widow of a missionary, who was forced to stay 111 the interior of the country north-cast of Gonaives after the death of her husband on account of the civil war in the surrounding district in ISI3S 69, declared to the writer that, not only were human sacrifices constant, but human flesh was sold in tha market as openly as Consul Hutchinson and M. Du Chailiu have told us that it is sold in the interior of Africa. M. Desjardiys, an eminent French merchant in Port-au-Prince, states that he met a party of soldiers beating a man with their clubs. On his enquiring their reason, they told their prisoner to open his basket, and M. Desjardins there saw the body of a child "cub up into regular joints." Cases of salting and storing for food portions of human bodies are vouched for on the testimony of Augustc Klie, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Sir Spenser St. John also tells us that in IS7S two women were arrested in a hut near Port-au-Prince in tho act of eating the flesh of a child raw, and on further examination it was found that all the blood had been sucked from the body. Governments, knowing l\ow deeply rooted it is, have uniformly shrank from dealing with the sanguinary rites of the Vaudoux worship, with the exception of the brief rule, extending to -nn-2 year only, of President Geffrard. It is not, of course, alleged that cannibalism prevails among the negro race throughput the West India Islands. The simple truth is that the Haytians have been relapsing into barbarism under the blighting influence of the civil wars which have, knowu but little intermission now for near & century,