652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Vodu worship, in so far as it relates to the worship of a snake, 

 was undoubtedly introduced into Hayti by slaves from Whydah 

 and Ardra, or Allada. Moreau de St. Mdry, an old author who de- 

 scribed Hayti while it was still a French colony, and who is 

 quoted by Sir S. St. John and Mr. Cable, distinctly says it was 

 introduced by the " Aradas " ; and it is only in the neighborhood 

 of those two old kingdoms that python-worship is to be found on 

 the Slave Coast at the present day. Whydah and Ardra were, at 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century, two small states situ- 

 ated near the southeastern corner of Ewe territory. Whydah, 

 which had a sea front of some thirty miles, extended inland about 

 seven miles, its northern boundary being a lagoon which ran east 

 and west just beyond the town of Savi, called Xavier by old 

 writers. Ardra, or Allada, lay inland of Whydah, and extended 

 as far northward as the marshy belt called the Ko that is, to 

 about thirty-five miles in a straight line from the sea. Its capital, 

 Ardra or Allada, formerly a large and populous town, is now a 

 miserable village, with a population of some three hundred souls. 



The inhabitants of these two kingdoms were essentially com- 

 mercial, and acted as middle-men between the inland tribes and 

 the Europeans who frequented Whydah in their ships. Of these 

 interior tribes, Dahomi, about 1625, became the most prominent. 

 It gradually subjugated the surrounding peoples, and, in 1723, 

 Guadja Trudo, the then King of Dahomi, was sufficiently power- 

 ful to demand of the Ardras a right of way and free traffic to 

 the sea. The Ardras refused. The Dahomis invaded their terri- 

 tory in 1724, defeated them in a great battle, and the kingdom of 

 Ardra was at an end. Three years later, in February, 1727, 

 Guadja Trudo made a similar demand upon the Whydahs ; the 

 king of the latter also refused compliance : his territory was at 

 once invaded and the kingdom overthrown. These two invasions 

 fix for us the date at which snake- worship was introduced into 

 Hayti ; for thousands of Ardras and Whydahs, prisoners of war, 

 were sold to the slave-traders and shipped across the Atlantic. 

 For a good many years before the downfall of these kingdoms 

 Whydah had been the chief, probably the only, slave emporium 

 of the Slave Coast, and large numbers of slaves had thence been 

 exported ; but these earlier slaves had not been Ardras and Why- 

 dahs, among whom alone the python-worship prevailed ; they 

 were Mahis, and members of the various small tribes which had 

 been defeated by Dahomi, and whom the people of the two sea- 

 board kingdoms had bought from the latter to sell to the white 

 men. 



It was, then, the war captives taken at the conquest of Ardra 

 and Whydah who brought both the word vodu and the snake- 

 worship into Hayti ; and if it be asked how it is that the other 



