Of all the strange countries in the world to-day there
is none stranger than Haiti. Surrounded by the civilizations of Europe and America, this small kingdom is ruled by negroes, and there are here mysteries as deep as any that came out of the heart of Africa. Mr: W. B. Seabrook, in The-Magic -Island (Harrap, 12s. 6d.) tells how he would go off alone with his "boy " to stay for days in negro villages, instead of gossiping with the whites in the club, watching the weird Voodoo rites which are still unlawfully practised there. He tells of the he-goats sacrificed to music that was " pure counterpoint, like a Bach fugue," while men and women danced in a wild ecstasy of primitive emotion. And he tells, too, of the " raising of the dead." One day, while walking through a cane field, you may see a little group of men toiling with bent backs under the lash of a single man or woman. And then you will know that you have come upon the most complete of all systems of slavery. For these men have been pulled out of their graves to work for a master against whom they cannot protest—because they are dumb, or raise a finger—because their limbs will not react except to his will. Scientists say that they have been put into a cataleptic trance and then briried and brought out of their graves while still alive, but no one knows the real truth of this mystery, which is only one of many which Mr. Seabrook describes so vividly and Mr. Alexander King illustrates with such brilliant drawings,
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