398 CUBA AND PORTO RICO 



some objects. The Sehna (Alabama) "Times" of May, 1*84, 

 describes one of the bags picked nip in Broad Street of 

 that city, which contained a rabbit's foot, a piece of dried 

 " coon-root," some other roots, and particles of parched 

 tobacco. The rabbit's foot, perhaps, possesses inoiv 

 powers of sorcery than any other instrument in use 

 among the black doctors of the South, being an especial 

 charm against evil, particularly " if it is a left hind foot 

 from an animal caught in a country graveyard on a cloudy 

 night in the new of the moon." 



The rabbit's foot of late years has pervaded white so- 

 ciety. Base-ball players and sporting men generally carry 

 one; and, mounted in silver, they are displayed in the 

 shops of our great cities. Even statesmen can be seen 

 wearing these as watch-charms in Washington. The 

 Philadelphia "Evening Telegram" of August 7, 1884, noted 

 that the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit had been 

 presented to Grover Cleveland as a talisman in the cam- 

 paign. 



The vaudouxism of the French colonies is something 

 different from obiism. It is obiism which has been 

 magnified by attributing to it the imaginary doings of 

 the French vaudois the supposed cannibalistic witches 

 whom every French peasant, white or black, thoroughly 

 believes in. The superstition of the terrible doings of the 

 vaudois is as firmly embedded in the folk-lore of the 

 French peasant's mind as our belief in the rotation of 

 the earth, and the word contains a strong moral reproach ; 

 and it is a strange coincidence that the Vaudois of the 

 fifteenth century were accused of all the horrible things 

 which to-day are attributed to the Haitian negroes, such 

 as cannibalism, especially the sacrificing of children and 

 eating of their remains ; the disinterment after burial of 

 those parts of the victims of such sacrifices as have not 

 been eaten; the transubstantiation of the human form 

 into the shape of wolves for the purpose of securing 

 victims for the sacrifice; their secret knowledge in the 



