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WHEN the facile pen of William B. Seabrook brought forth The Magic Isle with its weird tales of African superstition and voodoo ceremonies in the mountains of Haiti many readers in the United States got many a thrill from these mystery tales of the strange superstitions and rites of savage sorcery brought from the wilds of Africa years ago by the slave ancestors of the present Haitians and still practiced today in various forms in Haiti, and even in our own southern states.
Seabrook told in his book of the American Marine sergeant who, while serving as a lieutenant of the Garde d'Haiti, had been crowned as "King of La Gonave" by the simple natives of the island of that name, where he won the support and friendship of the natives by fair treatment and justice tempered with mercy and by the aid be gave them in improving their conditions as little farmers and fishermen living on their tropical isle in very primitive state. This tale of Faustin II., King of La Gonave, caught the fancy of readers all over America and even in foreign lands, and Lieutenant Faustin Wirkus, G. d'H., received an increasing...