ON VODU -WORSHIP. 66 1 



passed through a block, was tightened, the child's feet flew up 

 toward the roof, and the king approached it with a knife. The 

 loud shriek given by the victim aroused the Frenchman to the 

 truth of what was really going on. He shouted, " Oh, spare the 

 child ! " and would have rushed forward, but he was seized and 

 hurried from the spot by his friends. There was a short pursuit, 

 but he escaped, and, on reaching the town, strove to induce the 

 police to hasten to the place. They would, however, do nothing 

 till the morning, when they accompanied him to the scene of 

 sacrifice, and found the remains of the feast and the boiled skull 

 of the child. 



During the government of President Geffrard, a determined 

 opponent of vodu practices, four men and four women were tried 

 and convicted of the sacrifice of a young girl, whose body was 

 afterward eaten by the worshipers. The overthrow of Geffrard 

 was said to have been the result of the measures he took to stamp 

 out these atrocities, and since his time no President, except Bois- 

 rond Canal, appears to have had the courage to attack them. Ac- 

 cording to St. John, these practices are rapidly gaining ground, 

 and are now scarcely even concealed. 



The only native god of the Slave Coast whose worship is in 

 any way connected with cannibalism is Khebioso, the lightning- 

 god, who in the eastern districts, abutting upon the Yomba coun- 

 try, is commonly known by his Yomba name, Shango. In bygone 

 days it used to be the duty of the priests and kosio of Shango to 

 cut up and eat the bodies of all persons killed by lightning, but 

 at the present day the practice has fallen into desuetude. If the 

 person killed be a freeman, the priests place the corpse on a raised 

 scaffolding of sticks, and, after making all preparations for cut- 

 ting it up, suffer the relations to ransom it ; but where the de- 

 ceased is a slave, whose body no one would care to ransom, the 

 hosio cut from the corpse large lumps of flesh, and chew them, 

 without swallowing, crying to the passers-by, " "We sell you meat 

 good meat." As human sacrifices are frequently offered to 

 Shango, it seems probable that the sacrifice of " the goat without 

 horns," and the subsequent cannibal feast, are really derived from 

 the worship of the lightning-god ; and that, owing to the ab- 

 sence of distinct orders of priests in Hayti, the two practices 

 became grafted, by one sect of vodu-worshipers, upon the wor- 

 ship of the snake deity. This view is supported by what St. 

 John says (p. 195) of some curious polished stones, which were 

 shown to him by a French priest, and which formed part of the 

 relics worshiped by the vodu sect. One of these was a stone axe 

 in the form of a crescent, and all implements of the stone age 

 are, on the Slave Coast, sacred to Shango, whose thunderbolts (so- 

 kpe, " fire-stone ") they are believed to be. In fact, whenever a 



