One rises from the perusal of the "Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de
l'Amérique" with a feeling approaching regret; for although the six
pursy little volumes composing it--full of quaint drawings, plans, and
odd attempts at topographical maps--reveal a prolix writer. Père Labat
is always able to interest. He reminds you of one of those slow,
precise, old-fashioned conversationalists who measure the weight of
every word and never leave anything to the imagination of the audience,
yet who invariably reward the patience of their listeners sooner or
later by reflections of surprising profundity or theories of a totally
novel description. But what particularly impresses the reader of these
volumes is not so much the recital of singular incidents and facts as
the revelation of the author's personality. Reading him, you divine a
character of enormous force,--gifted but unevenly balanced; singularly
shrewd in worldly affairs, and surprisingly credulous in other respects;
superstitious and yet cynical; unsympathetic by his positivism, but
agreeable through natural desire to give pleasure; just by nature, yet
capable of merciless severity; profoundly devout, but withal tolerant
for his calling and his time. He is sufficiently free from petty bigotry
to make fun of the scruples of his brethren in the matter of employing
heretics; and his account of the manner in which he secured the services
of a first-class refiner for the Martinique plantation at the Fond
Saint-Jacques is not the least amusing page in the book. He writes: "The
religious who had been appointed Superior in Guadeloupe wrote me that he
would find it difficult to employ this refiner because the man was a
Lutheran. This scruple gave me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have
him upon our plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but did not know how
I would be able to manage it. I wrote to the Superior at once that all
he had to do was to send the man to me, because it was a matter of
indifference to me whether the sugar he might make were Catholic or
Lutheran sugar, provided it were very white."[11] He displays equal
frankness in confessing an error or a discomfiture. He acknowledges that
while Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy, he used to teach that
there were no tides in the tropics: and in a discussion as to whether
the _diablotin_ (a now almost extinct species of West Indian nocturnal
bird) were fish or flesh, and might or might not be eaten in Lent, he
tells us that he was fairly worsted,--(although he could cite the
celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese" as a "fact" in justification of
one's right to doubt the nature of diablotins).
One has reason to suspect that Père Labat, notwithstanding his
references to the decision of the Church that diablotins were not birds,
felt quite well assured within himself that they were. There is a sly
humor in his story of these controversies, which would appear to imply
that while well pleased at the decision referred to, he knew all about
diablotins. Moreover, the father betrays certain tendencies to
gormandize not altogether in harmony with the profession of an
ascetic.... There were parrots in nearly all of the French Antilles in
those days;[12] and Père Labat does not attempt to conceal his fondness
for--cooked parrots. (He does not appear to have cared much for them as
pets: if they could not talk well, he condemned them forthwith to the
pot.) "They all live upon fruits and seeds," he writes, "and their flesh
contracts the odor and color of that particular fruit or seed they feed
upon. They become exceedingly tat in the season when the guavas are
ripe; and when they eat the seeds of the _Bois d'Inde_ they have an odor
of nutmeg and cloves which is delightful (_une odeur de muscade et de
girofle qui fait plaisir_)." He recommends four superior ways of
preparing them, as well as other fowls, for the table, of which the
first and the best way is "to pluck them alive, then to make them
swallow vinegar, and then to strangle them while they have the vinegar
still in their throats by twisting their necks"; and the fourth way is
"to skin them alive" (_de les écorcher tout en vie_).... "It is
certain," he continues, "that these ways are excellent, and that fowls
that have to be cooked in a hurry thereby obtain an admirable tenderness
(_une tendreté admirable_)." Then he makes a brief apology to his
readers, not for the inhumanity of his recipes, but for a display of
culinary knowledge scarcely becoming a monk, and acquired only through
those peculiar necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed
upon all alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an
impression which there is little in the entire work capable of
modifying. Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of
altruism; his cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not offset
by any visible sympathy with human pain;--he never compassionates: you
may seek in vain through all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of
gentle Père Du Tertre, who, filled with intense pity for the condition
of the blacks, prays masters to be merciful and just to their slaves for
the love of God. Labat suggests, on the other hand, that slavery is a
good means of redeeming negroes from superstition and saving their souls
from hell: he selects and purchases them himself for the Saint-Jacques
plantation, never makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and never appears to
feel a particle of commiseration for their lot. In fact, the emotional
feeling displayed by Père Du Tertre (whom he mocks slyly betimes) must
have seemed to him rather condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat
regarded the negro as a natural child of the devil,--a born
sorcerer,--an evil being wielding occult power.
Perhaps the chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing in the
book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature
a credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a
certain negro sent out of the country "who predicted the arrival of
vessels and other things to come,--in so far, at least, as the devil
himself was able to know and reveal these matters to him," he plainly
states his own belief in magic as follows.--
"I know there are many people who consider as pure imagination, and as
silly stories, or positive falsehoods, all that is related about
sorcerers and their compacts with the devil. I was myself for a long
time of this opinion. Moreover, I am aware that what is said on this
subject is frequently exaggerated; but I am now convinced it must be
acknowledged that all which has been related is not entirely false,
although perhaps it may not be entirely true."...
Therewith he begins to relate stones upon what may have seemed
unimpeachable authority in those days. The first incident narrated took
place, he assures us, in the Martinique Dominican convent, shortly
before his arrival in the colony. One of the fathers, Père Fraise, had
had brought to Martinique, "from the kingdom of Juda (?) in Guinea," a
little negro about nine or ten years old. Not long afterwards there was
a serious drought, and the monks prayed vainly for rain. Then the negro
child, who had begun to understand and speak a little French, told his
masters that he was a Rainmaker, that he could obtain them all the rain
they wanted. "This proposition," says Père Labat, "greatly astonished
the fathers: they consulted together, and at last, curiosity overcoming
reason, they gave their consent that this unbaptized child should make
some rain fall in their garden." The unbaptized child asked them if they
wanted "a big or a little rain"; they answered that a moderate rain
would satisfy them. Thereupon the little negro got three oranges, and
placed them on the ground in a line at a short distance from one
another, and bowed down before each of them in turn, muttering words in
an unknown tongue. Then he got three small orange-branches, stuck a
branch in each orange, and repeated his prostrations and
mutterings;--after which he took one of the branches, stood up, and
watched the horizon. A small cloud appeared, and he pointed the branch
at it. It approached swiftly, rested above the garden, and sent down a
copious shower of rain. Then the boy made a hole in the ground, and
buried the oranges and the branches. The fathers were amazed to find
that not a single drop of rain had fallen outside their garden. They
asked the boy who had taught him this sorcery, and he answered them that
among the blacks on board the slave-ship which had brought him
over there were some Rain-makers who had taught him. Père Labat
declares there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence:
he cites the names of Père Praise Père Rosiè, Père Temple, and Père
Bournot,--all members of his own order,--as trustworthy witnesses of
this incident.
Père Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still more
extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Gênes. M. le Comte
du Gênes, husband of the lady in question, and commander of a French
squadron, captured the English fort of Gorea in 1696, and made prisoners
of all the English slaves in the service of the factory there
established. But the vessel on which these were embarked was unable to
leave the coast, in spite of a good breeze: she seemed bewitched. Some
of the slaves finally told the captain there was a negress on board who
had enchanted the ship, and who had the power to "dry up the hearts" of
all who refused to obey her. A number of deaths taking place among the
blacks, the captain ordered autopsies made, and it was found that the
hearts of the dead negroes were desiccated. The negress was taken on
deck, tied to a gun and whipped, but uttered no cry;--the ship's
surgeon, angered at her stoicism, took a hand in the punishment and
flogged her "with all his force." Thereupon she told him that inasmuch
as he had abused her without reason, his heart also should be "dried
up." He died next day; and his heart was found in the condition
predicted. All this time the ship could not be made to move in any
direction; and the negress told the captain that until he should put her
and her companions on shore he would never be able to sail. To convince
him of her power she further asked him to place three fresh melons in a
chest, to lock the chest and put a guard over it; when she should tell
him to unlock it, there would be no melons there. The captain made the
experiment. When the chest was opened, the melons appeared to be there;
but on touching them it was found that only the outer rind remained: the
interior had been dried up,--like the surgeon's heart. Thereupon the
captain put the witch and her friends ashore, and sailed away without
further trouble.
Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which Père Labat
earnestly vouches is the following:--
A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witchcraft at St. Thomas in
1701: his principal crime was "having made a little figure of baked clay
to speak." A certain creole, meeting the negro on his way to the place
of execution, jeeringly observed, "Well, you cannot make your little
figure talk any more now;--it has been broken. If the gentleman allow
me," replied the prisoner, "I will make the cane he carries in his hand
speak." The creole's curiosity was strongly aroused: he prevailed upon
the guards to halt a few minutes, and permit the prisoner to make the
experiment. The negro then took the cane, stuck it into the ground in
the middle of the road, whispered something to it, and asked the
gentleman what he wished to know. "I would like to know," answered the
latter, "whether the ship----has yet sailed from Europe, and when she
will arrive." "Put your ear to the head of the cane," said the negro. On
doing so the creole distinctly heard a thin voice which informed him
that the vessel in question had left a certain French port on such a
date; that she would reach St. Thomas within three days; that she had
been delayed on her voyage by a storm which had carried away her foretop
and her mizzen sail; that she had such and such passengers on board
(mentioning the names), all in good health.... After this incident the
negro was burned alive; but within three days the vessel arrived in
port, and the prediction or divination was found to have been absolutely
correct in every particular.
... Père Labat in no way disapproves the atrocious sentence inflicted
upon the wretched negro: in his opinion such predictions were made by
the power and with the personal aid of the devil; and for those who
knowingly maintained relations with the devil, he could not have
regarded any punishment too severe. That he could be harsh enough
himself is amply shown in various accounts of his own personal
experience with alleged sorcerers, and especially in the narration of
his dealings with one--apparently a sort of African doctor--who was a
slave on a neighboring plantation, but used to visit the Saint-Jacques
quarters by stealth to practise his art. One of the slaves of the order,
a negress, falling very sick, the wizard was sent for; and he came with
all his paraphernalia--little earthen pots and fetiches, etc.--during
the night. He began to practise his incantations, without the least
suspicion that Père Labat was watching him through a chink; and, after
having consulted his fetiches, he told the sick woman she would die
within four days. At this juncture the priest suddenly burst in the door
and entered, followed by several powerful slaves. He dashed to pieces
the soothsayer's articles, and attempted to reassure the frightened
negress, by declaring the prediction a lie inspired by the devil. Then
he had the sorcerer stripped and flogged in his presence.
"I had him given," he calmly observes, "about (_environ_) three hundred
lashes, which flayed him (_l'écorchait_) from his shoulders to his
knees. He screamed like a madman. All the negroes trembled, and assured
me that the devil would cause my death.... Then I had the wizard put in
irons, after having had him well washed with a _pimentade_,--that is to
say, with brine in which pimentos and small lemons have been crushed.
This causes a horrible pain to those skinned by the whip; but it is a
certain remedy against gangrene."...
And then he sent the poor wretch back to his master with a note
requesting the latter to repeat the punishment,--a demand that seems to
have been approved, as the owner of the negro was "a man who feared
God." Yet Père Labat is obliged to confess that in spite of all his
efforts, the sick negress died on the fourth day,--as the sorcerer had
predicted. This fact must have strongly confirmed his belief that the
devil was at the bottom of the whole affair, and caused him to doubt
whether even a flogging of _about_ three hundred lashes, followed by a
pimentade, was sufficient chastisement for the miserable black. Perhaps
the tradition of this frightful whipping may have had something to do
with the terror which still attaches to the name of the Dominican in
Martinique. The legal extreme punishment was twenty-nine lashes.
Père Labat also avers that in his time the negroes were in the habit of
carrying sticks which had the power of imparting to any portion of the
human body touched by them a most severe chronic pain. He at first
believed, he says, that these pains were merely rheumatic; but after all
known remedies for rheumatism had been fruitlessly applied, he became
convinced there was something occult and diabolical in the manner of
using and preparing these sticks.... A fact worthy of note is that this
belief is still prevalent in Martinique!
One hardly ever meets in the country a negro who does not carry either a
stick or a cutlass, or both. The cutlass is indispensable to those who
work in the woods or upon plantations; the stick is carried both as a
protection against snakes and as a weapon of offence and defence in
village quarrels, for unless a negro be extraordinarily drunk he will
not strike his fellow with a cutlass. The sticks are usually made of a
strong dense wood: those most sought after of a material termed
_moudongue_,[13] almost as tough as, but much lighter than, our hickory.
On inquiring whether any of the sticks thus carried were held to possess
magic powers, I was assured by many country people that there were men
who knew a peculiar method of "arranging" sticks so that to touch any
person with them even lightly, _and through any thickness of clothing_,
would produce terrible and continuous pain.
[Illustration: LE CALVAIRE
_Above the village of Fort-de-France a series of fourteen
little crosses lines the roadside to the hilltop--each
bearing a relievo representing incidents of Christ's
Passion._]
Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether the sun
revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun,[14] Père Labat
was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more ignorant than the
average missionary of his time: it is only by contrast with his
practical perspicacity in other matters, his worldly rationalism and
executive shrewdness, that this superstitious naïveté impresses one as
odd. And how singular sometimes is the irony of Time! All the wonderful
work the Dominican accomplished has been forgotten by the people; while
all the witchcrafts that he warred against survive and flourish openly;
and his very name is seldom uttered but in connection with
superstitions,--has been, in fact, preserved among the blacks by the
power of superstition alone, by the belief in zombis and even
goblins.... "_Mi! ti manmaille-là, main ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend
ou!_"...
[Footnote 11: Vol. III, p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.]
[Footnote 12: The parrots of Martinique he describes as having been
green, with slate-colored plumage on the top of the head, mixed with a
little red, and as having a few red feathers in the wings, throat, and
tail.]
[Footnote 13: The creole word _moudongue_ is said to be a corruption of
_Mondongue_, the name of an African coast tribe who had the reputation
of being cannibals. A Mondongue slave on the plantations was generally
feared by his fellow-blacks of other tribes; and the name of the
cannibal race became transformed into an adjective to denote anything
formidable or terrible. A blow with a stick made of the wood described
being greatly dreaded, the term was applied first to the stick, and
afterward to the wood itself.]
[Footnote 14: Accounting for the origin of the trade-winds, he writes:
"I say that the Trade-Winds do not exist in the Torrid Zone merely by
chance; forasmuch as the cause which produces them is very necessary,
very sure, and very continuous, since they result _either from the
movement of the Earth around the Sun, or from the movement of the Sun
around the Earth, Whether it he the one or the other of these two great
bodies which moves_..." etc.]
V
Few habitants of St. Pierre now remember that the beautiful park behind
the cathedral used to be called the Savanna of the White Fathers,--and
the long shadowed meadow beside the Roxelane, the Savanna of the Black
Fathers: the Jesuits. All the great religious orders have long since
disappeared from the colony: their edifices have been either converted
to other uses or demolished; their estates have passed into other
hands.... Were their labors, then, productive of merely ephemeral
results?--was the colossal work of a Père Labat all in vain, so far as
the future is concerned? The question is not easily answered; but it is
worth considering.
Of course the material prosperity which such men toiled to obtain for
their order represented nothing more, even to their eyes, than the means
of self-maintenance, and the accumulation of force necessary for the
future missionary labors of the monastic community. The real ultimate
purpose was, not the acquisition of power for the order, but for the
Church, of which the orders represented only a portion of the force
militant; and this purpose did not fail of accomplishment. The orders
passed away only when their labors had been completed,--when Martinique
had become (exteriorly, at least) more Catholic than Rome itself,--after
the missionaries had done all that religious zeal could do in moulding
and remoulding the human material under their control. These men could
scarcely have anticipated those social and political changes which the
future reserved for the colonies, and which no ecclesiastical sagacity
could, in any event, have provided against. It is in the existing
religious condition of these communities that one may observe and
estimate the character and the probable duration of the real work
accomplished by the missions.
... Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, its visible
religious condition continues to impress one as something phenomenal. A
stranger, who has no opportunity to penetrate into the home life of the
people, will not, perhaps, discern the full extent of the religious
sentiment; but, nevertheless, however brief his stay, he will observe
enough of the extravagant symbolism of the cult to fill him with
surprise. Wherever he may choose to ride or to walk, he is certain to
encounter shrines, statues of saints, or immense crucifixes. Should he
climb up to the clouds of the peaks, he will find them all along the
way;--he will perceive them waiting for him, looming through the mists
of the heights; and passing through the loveliest ravines, he will see
niches hollowed out in the volcanic rocks, above and below him, or
contrived in the trunks of trees bending over precipices, often in
places so difficult of access that he wonders how the work could have
been accomplished. All this has been done by the various property-owners
throughout the country: it is the traditional custom to do it--brings
good-luck! After a longer stay in the island, one discovers also that in
almost every room of every dwelling--stone residence, wooden cottage, or
palm-thatched ajoupa--there is a chapelle: that is, a sort of large
bracket fastened to the wall, on which crosses or images are placed,
with vases of flowers, and lamps or wax-tapers to be burned at night.
Sometimes, moreover, statues are placed in windows, or above
door-ways;--and all passers-by take off their hats to these. Over the
porch of the cottage in a mountain village, where I lived for some
weeks, there was an absurd little window contrived,--a sort of purely
ornamental dormer,--and in this a Virgin about five inches high had been
placed. At a little distance it looked like a toy,--a child's doll
forgotten there; and a doll I always supposed it to be, until one day
that I saw a long procession of black laborers passing before the house,
every one of whom took off his hat to it.... My bedchamber in the same
cottage resembled a religious museum. On the chapelle there were no less
than eight Virgins, varying in height from one to sixteen inches,--a St.
Joseph,--a St. John,--a crucifix,--and a host of little objects in the
shape of hearts or crosses, each having some special religious
significance;--while the walls were covered with framed certificates of
baptism, "first-communion," confirmation, and other documents
commemorating the whole church life of the family for two generations.
... Certainly the first impression created by this perpetual display of
crosses, statues, and miniature chapels is not pleasing,--particularly
as the work is often inartistic to a degree bordering upon the
grotesque, and nothing resembling art is anywhere visible. Millions of
francs must have been consumed in these creations, which have the
rudeness of mediævalism without its emotional sincerity, and
which--amid the loveliness of tropic nature, the grace of palms, the
many-colored fire of liana blossoms--jar on the æsthetic sense with an
almost brutal violence. Yet there is a veiled poetry in these silent
populations of plaster and wood and stone. They represent something
older than the Middle Ages, older than Christianity,--something
strangely distorted and transformed, it is true, but recognizably
conserved by the Latin race from those antique years when every home had
its beloved ghosts, when every wood or hill or spring had its gracious
divinity, and the boundaries of all fields were marked and guarded by
statues of gods.
Instances of iconoclasm are of course highly rare in a country of which
no native--rich or poor, white or half-breed--fails to doff his hat
before every shrine, cross, or image he may happen to pass. Those
merchants of St. Pierre or of Fort-de-France living only a few miles out
of the city must certainly perform a vast number of reverences on their
way to or from business;--I saw one old gentleman uncover his white head
about twenty times in the course of a fifteen minutes' walk. I never
heard of but one image-breaker in Martinique; and his act was the result
of superstition, not of any hostility to popular faith or custom: it was
prompted by the same childish feeling which moves Italian fishermen
sometimes to curse St. Antony or to give his image a ducking in bad
weather. This Martinique iconoclast was a negro cattle-driver who one
day, feeling badly in need of a glass of tafia, perhaps, left the
animals intrusted to him in care of a plaster image of the Virgin, with
this menace (the phrase is on record):--
"_Moin ka quitté bef-la ba ou pou gàdé ba moin. Quand moin vini, si
moin pa trouvé compte-moin, moin ké fouté ou vingt-nèf coudfouètt!_"
(I leave these cattle with you to take care of for me. When I come
back, if I don't find them all here, I'll give you twenty-nine lashes.)
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE
"_There is a veiled poetry in these silent populations of
plaster and wood and stone. Something older than
the Middle Ages, older than Christianity._"]
Returning about half an hour later, he was greatly enraged to find his
animals scattered in every direction;--and, rushing at the statue, he
broke it from the pedestal, fixing it upon the ground, and gave it
twenty-nine lashes with his bull-whip. For this he was arrested, tried,
and sentenced to imprisonment, with hard labor, for life! In those days
there were no colored magistrates;--the judges were all _bêkés._
"Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my informant, a planter who
conducted me to the scene of the alleged sacrilege.
"Severe, yes," he answered;--"and I suppose the act would seem to you
more idiotic than criminal. But here, in Martinique, there were large
questions involved by such an offence. Relying, as we have always done
to some extent, upon religious influence as a factor in the maintenance
of social order, the negro's act seemed a dangerous example."...
That the Church remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique there
can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful
influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A
Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and
the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would
indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any
preponderant authority. By expelling various religious orders;--by
establishing lay schools, lycées, and other educational institutions
where the teaching is largely characterized by aggressive antagonism to
Catholic ideas;--by the removal of crucifixes and images from public
buildings, French Radicalism did not inflict any great blow upon Church
interests. So far as the white, and, one may say, the wealthy,
population is concerned, the Church triumphs in her hostility to the
Government schools; and to the same extent she holds an educational
monopoly. No white creole would dream of sending his children to a lay
school or a lycée--notwithstanding the unquestionable superiority of
the educational system in the latter institutions;--and, although
obliged, as the chief tax-paying class, to bear the burden of
maintaining these establishments, the whites hold them in such horror
that the Government professors are socially ostracized. No doubt the
prejudice or pride which abhors mixed schools aids the Church in this
respect; she herself recognizes race-feeling, keeps her schools unmixed,
and even in her convents, it is said, obliges the colored nuns to serve
the white! For more than two centuries every white generation has been
religiously moulded in the seminaries and convents; and among the native
whites one never hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion.
Except among the colored men educated in the Government schools, or
their foreign professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;--and this,
not because the creole whites, many of whom have been educated in Paris,
are naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of sympathy with the mental
expansion of the age, but because the religious question at Martinique
has become so intimately complicated with the social and political one,
concerning which there can be no compromise whatever, that to divorce
the former from the latter is impossible. Roman Catholicism is an
element of the cement which holds creole society together; and it is
noteworthy that other creeds are not represented. I knew of only one
Episcopalian and one Methodist in the island,--and heard a sort of
legend about a solitary Jew whose whereabouts I never could
discover;--but these were strangers.
It was only through the establishment of universal suffrage, which
placed the white population at the mercy of its former slaves, that the
Roman Church sustained any serious injury. All local positions are
filled by blacks or men of color; no white creole can obtain a public
office or take part in legislation; and the whole power of the black
vote is ungenerously used against the interests of the class thus
politically disinherited. The Church suffers in consequence: her power
depended upon her intimate union with the wealthy and dominant class;
and she will never be forgiven by those now in power for her sympathetic
support of that class in other years. Politics yearly intensify this
hostility; and as the only hope for the restoration of the whites to
power, and of the Church to its old position, lies in the possibility of
another empire or a revival of the monarchy, the white creoles and their
Church are forced into hostility against republicanism and the republic.
And political newspapers continually attack Roman Catholicism,--mock its
tenets and teachings,--ridicule its dogmas and ceremonies,--satirize its
priests.
In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a large
place in the affection of the poorer classes;--her ceremonies are always
well attended; money pours into her coffers; and one can still witness
the curious annual procession of the "converted,"--aged women of color
and negresses going to communion for the first time, all wearing
snow-white turbans in honor of the event. But among the country people,
where the dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is
almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;--the images and
crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is inspired by a
feeling purely fetichistic. With the political dispossession of the
whites, certain dark powers, previously concealed or repressed, have
obtained formidable development. The old enemy of Père Labat, the
wizard (the _quimboiseur_), already wields more authority than the
priest, exercises more terror than the magistrate, commands more
confidence than the physician. The educated mulatto class may affect to
despise him;--but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark.
Astonishing is the persistence with which the African has clung to these
beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and so
mercilessly punished by the courts for centuries. He still goes to mass,
and sends his children to the priest; but he goes more often to the
quimboiseur and the "_magnetise._" He finds use for both beliefs, but
gives large preference to the savage one,--just as he prefers the
pattering of his tamtam to the music of the military band at the _Savane
du Fort_.... And should it come to pass that Martinique be ever totally
abandoned by its white population,--an event by no means improbable in
the present order of things,--the fate of the ecclesiastical fabric so
toilsomely reared by the monastic orders is not difficult to surmise.