They had an original way of expressing their vague instinct that the Supreme Being loves truth and cleanliness in the inward parts.  Each person presented himself, with singing, before the chief idol, and there thrust a stick into his throat till the gorge rose, in order, as they said, to appear before the Divinity with a heart clean and upon the lips.[O]

[Footnote O:  Histoire d’Hayti, par M. Placide Justin, p. 8.]

The priests were diviners and doctors.  If their predictions failed, they did not want the usual cunning of mediums and spiritual quacks of all ages, who are never known to be caught.  But it became a more serious affair for them in the case of a death.  Friends consulted the soul at the moment of its leaving the body, and if it could give no sign, or if no omen of fair play appeared from any quarter, the butio was held to be the author of the death, and, if he was not a very popular individual, he incurred the vengeance of the family.  If at such a time an animal was seen creeping near, the worst suspicions were confirmed.[P]

[Footnote P:  Voyages d’un Naturaliste, etc., par M.E.  Descourtilz, Tom.  II. p. 19, et seq. 1809.]

The natives had a legend that the sun and moon issued from one of these caverns, which Mr. Irving says is the Voute-a-Minguet, about eight leagues from Cap Haytien.

They were very nervous, and did not like to go about after dark.  Many people of all races have this vague disquiet as soon as the sun goes down.  It is the absence of light which accounts for all the tremors and tales of superstition.  How these sunflowers of Hayti must have shuddered and shrunk together at the touch of darkness!  But they had a graceful custom of carrying the cocujos[Q] in a perforated calabash, and keeping them, in their huts, when the sudden twilight fell.

[Footnote Q:  A Haytian word appropriated by the Spaniards, (cocuyos); Elater noctilucus.  Their light is brilliant enough to read by.]

Their festivals and public gatherings were more refined than those of the Caribs, who held but one meeting, called a Vin, for consultation upon war-matters and a debauch upon cassava-beer.[R] The Haytians loved music, and possessed one or two simple instruments; their maguey was like a timbrel, made of the shells of certain fishes.  Their speech, with its Italian terminations, flowed easily into singing, and they extemporized, as the negroes do, the slightest incidents in rhythmical language.  They possessed national ballads, called areytos, and held in high repute the happy composers of fresh ones.  Altogether their life was full of innocence and grace.

[Footnote R:  Father Du Tertre enjoys relating, that a Carib orator, wishing to make his speech more impressive, invested his scarlet splendor in a jupe which he had lately taken from an Englishwoman, tying it where persons of the same liturgical tendency tie their cambric.  But though his garrulity was thereby increased, the charms of the liquor drew his audience away.]