Alexandria Gazette

Voodoism.—The New York Sun says:-

The introduction of schools among the emancipated blacks in the South has not had the effect of checking the popular belief in voodoism, which, on the contrary, is spreading to regions where it was formerly unknown. One reason of this is the removal of all restrictions as to travel, thus permitting the agents of the superstition to roam about in all directions. Any old rough-looking black man with a bag of lizard heads, old bones, and other traps calculated to excite the African imagination, can tramp from one plantation to another, living on the best the country affords, without troubling himself about work at all. The blacks will all fear him, and they will many of them be ready to pay him liberally for exerting his supernatural powers in their behalf. Some of these fellows are very cunning. In Louisiana last season a colored woman was taken sick, and not exactly understanding the cause of her illness, she at once came to the conclusion that she had been voodooed. An old conjurer happened along, and he pretended to cure her by removing a live lizard from the woman's arm. He would allow no one to see him do it; but as soon as the act was done he sent to the fields, and the hands left their ploughs and rushed to the quarters to see the reptile the wizard had taken from the voodooed woman. Of course, having seen the creature, they could all bear witness to the efficacy of the wizard's power, while the fact was that the old fellow had brought the lizard with him in his pocket, and by a very simple slight of hand had made his subject believe he had taken it from her arm. This fellow made a practice of collecting young alligators from the swamps, using them for the same purpose as the lizards. The blacks believe that these impostors have the power to put spells upon them, to produce sickness, insanity, and death, at will, and that they alone can counteract the influence of other conjurers.