Brief Notices of Hayti: with its condition, resources, and prospects

Introduction

. In bringing before the public a view of the present state of Hayti, it seemed desirable to prefix to the narrative, a brief sketch of the history of the island. The Author had intended to prepare such a sketch ; but upon examining those works, both French and English, which are considered as authorities, he found so many discrepancies and counter statements, involving the character of several of the leaders in the late revolution, that he abandoned the attempt in despair. The history of Hayti has yet to be written, nor can it be written impartially, so as to establish the truth, and the whole truth, till the present generation shall have passed away. The literary public of France and England may yet look for an accession of historical materials, that will throw creat light on the late contests between the free and the servile classes, and between the whites and the men of colour.

The present Secretary of State for Hayti, General Inginac, who is now advanced in age, and who was engaged in the wars of the revolution, almost from his boy hood, has prepared a narrative of the passing events of the period, both civil and military, which is intended for publication at his decease. This nara

INTRODUCTION.

. rative, when published, will, no doubt, illustrate many circumstances that are now obscure, and serve to unfold more clearly the character and motives of some remarkable men, his contempora ries. It is the delight of the lovers of liberty to dwell with enthusiasm on the talents and exploits of Toussaint L 'Ouverture, undoubtedly the greatest man that took part in the revolution of St. Domingo, and one of the ablest Generals of his age ; but it is very doubtful whether his character, as a leader in the great struggle, will come out of the crucible of impartial history, with all that brightness and purity that some modern narratives, half history, half romance, seem to assign to it. The opinion of many persons in Hayti, whether well or ill-founded, we stop not to inquire, is cer tainly adverse to such high pretensions : these individuals represent Toussaint as one of the best men of his day ; but not as free from many of the blemishes which generally attach to warriors.

The lines of Pope are become an axiom, and are often quoted as decisive with regard to men who are engaged in the dismal work of slaughtering their fellows : " All heroes are alike : the points agreed ; From Macedonia's madman to the Swede.'' and it is remarkable to observe, as a confirmation of the poet's doctrine, which is true to a certain extent, that the character of Hannibal, as penned

INTRODUCTION.

. V by the severe and vigorous hand of Juvenal, has been accommodated by Dr. Johnson in his " Vanity of Human Wishes," to represent the life and exploits of Charles the Twelfth ; and that the portrait drawn of the latter, might, with the omission of a line or two, and the change of half a dozen words, be made literally to apply to Napoleon Buonaparte. If there be any exception to the truth of Pope's apothegm in modern days, that exception may undoubtedly be made in favour of Washington and Toussaint. But those great men who act in a public contest, where the passions of a whole people are stirred up and roused into revengeful activity, however mild they may be by nature, and however disposed to act with mercy, often contract the stains that attach to the party they embrace, or the cause in which they embark, and exhibit in their conduct more than a common frailty.

The civil wars of Hayti are now ended; and happy would it be for humanity's sake, if we could draw the curtain of night on the many dark transactions that disgraced the period of their progress ! The people of that country, however, have learned from them an awful lesson ; and this one good con sequence has resulted, that the Republic, weary of contending with the sword, is now desirous of keeping it sheathed in the scabbard, and of main taining an honourable and lasting peace. The author of the following " brief notices" declines the task of an historian ; but if his pages, VI 1N1K0DUCTT0N. which are intended to exhibit the present state of Hayti, with its resources and prospects, should afford amusement or instruction, in any degree, to those who read them, his end will be fully answered, and he will receive all the reward he desires or looks for. York, Third Month, 1842. CONTENTS. PAGE

Chapter I. Hayti, Its Geography

The island of Hayti, formerly Hispaniola or St. Domingo, placed between the 18th and 20th degrees of north latitude, and from 68 to 75 degrees west, has a length of 360 miles from east to west, and a breadth, varying from 60 to 120 miles. Its circumference measured by an even line, excluding the bays, is nearly a thousand miles. This island so important for its situation and great natural advantages, is four times as large as Jamaica, and nearly equal in extent to Ireland. It is situated at the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico : is one of the four larger Antilles, and holds the second rank after Cuba, from which it is distant only twenty leagues. Jamaica lies westward of it about forty leagues; and Porto Rico, a large and now populous island belonging to Spain, twenty-two leagues eastward. On the north are the Bahama islands, at a distance of two or three days' sail; and southward, separated by 700 miles of ocean, is the great continent of South America.

B The principal islands adjacent to Hayti and belonging to it, are Gonave, La Saone, Isle de Vaches, and Tortue, all of considerable extent ; but all through the policy of the government uncultivated. Hayti presents the aspect of a large territory composed of mountains and plains, watered by a few extensive unnavigable rivers and in numerable streams : it abounds in forests of mahogany wood and other fine timber — affords a great variety of climate ; and, displays a grandeur and beauty of natural scenery, not surpassed in the tropical regions of the New World, or perhaps of the globe itself. Like all the other islands of this region, it is subject to awful tempests, known by their Indian name of hurricanes, and is liable to frequent shocks of earth quake. Tlie latter formidable phenomenon in 1564, destroyed the newly founded city of Concepcion de la Vega, and has occasioned at several different and dis tant periods, the overthrow or disturbance of Port au Prince, its present capital.

A line of demarcation, in some places artificially drawn, formerly separated the Spanish part of the island from the French ; but there is now no political distinction of territory, the whole country being united under one political head subject to the same laws. The ancient part of the island where the Spanish language is still spoken, embraces more than two-thirds of the soil, and contains only one-sixth of the inhabitants. The population of the Spanish part is estimated at a hundred and thirty thousand ; of the French part, nearly seven hundred thousand. The French or western territory, is the only part of the island that has numerous towns and villages, and it is here principally, that commerce carries on its exchanges with other nations. A large quantity of mahogany wood is exported from Santa Domingo, and a good deal of tobacco from Santiago and Port au Platte, all towns once belonging to the Spaniards, and still Spanish as to language and the customs of the people ; but the great staples of coffee, cotton, mahogany, and dye-wood, aro collected on the French side and shipped from Cape Haytien, Port au Prince, Cayes, Gonaives and Jacmel.

The mountains of Hayti are many of them of great height. The principal range, is that of Cibao, near the centre of the island, from which other chains of hills diverge in different directions. The peak of Cibao is 7200 feet above the level of the sea. The mountains bearing the name of La Selle, Le Mexique, and Le Maniel, are parts of the same range terminating on the southern coast. La Selle has an elevation of 7000 feet, and bears south-west of Port au Prince, at a distance of forty miles. The La Hotte mountains rise in the neighbourhood of Cayes, some of which are said to be as high as those of La Selle and Cibao. Besides these, there are the mountains of Monte Christo running from the north of the island eastward to the Peninsula of Samana, from the summits of which, Columbus gazed with astonishment at the extent and fertility of the plains below, since that period deprived by death and massacre of its original inhabitants, and now known by the expressive name of la despoblada or the unpeopled.

The other ranges are those of Cahos and Los Muertos, which are rather hills than high mountains, having a mean elevation of about 2500 feet. " This configura tion," says Moreau de St. Mery, " and the height of the mountains is the cause why, notwithstanding the great extent of many of its plains, the island when viewed from seaboard appears mountainous altogether, b2 and that its aspect is so forbidding. But the observer," he continues, " who contemplates these vast chains and all the branches that diverge from them, and pursues their various ramifications over the surface of the island, will see at once the cause of its fertility : they form an immense reservoir for the waters which are distributed to the soil by rivers without number : they temper the heat of a burning sun, arrest the fury of the winds, and multiply the resources of human industry to an astonishing extent."

The most spacious of the plains, is tbat of Vega Real, which traverses several of the northern depart ments : its length is 220 miles : it is exceedingly fertile and well watered. Its chief produce, is tobacco of an excellent quality : it grows also sugar and cocoa, and affords pasturage to large herds of cattle ; but owing to its present sparse population, yields comparatively little of food or agreeable luxuries to the wants of man. The noble rivers Yague and Youna which traverse its whole extent, will serve greatly to facilitate the transit of its produce, whenever a large and active body of settlers may devote themselves to the cultivation of its soil. This plain alone might well support its million of inhabitants. That of Santa Domingo is the next in importance, and has very few people upon it, although from its fertility and extent of surface — 700 square leagues — it would yield, if cultivated, an immensity of produce.

The plain of Azua has a surface of 150 square leagues, and that of Neybe eighty square leagues. Of the remaining plains, it is only needful to mention, La plaine du Nord, near Cape Haytien, and Le cui de sac, near Port au Prince, in both of which, sugar was formerly cultivated to a great extent, and where a large number of sugar works and distilleries are still in operation to furnish syrop and rum for the home market. The principal rivers are the Yague and Youna before mentioned and the Artibonite, whose entire course is 160 miles long in almost a direct line, and which, during the time of its floods, floats on its bosom to the sea, those vast logs of mahogany that find so ready a sale in the markets of Europe, under the name of Spanish mahogany. Hayti has some lakes of considerable size, where alligators abound : it is rich also in mineral springs, and is believed to possess vast treasures of iron and copper ores, together with gold and silver.

The mines that contain the precious metals have long since been abandoned for want of capital. Such in its physical structure, is one of the islands we proposed to visit on our leaving home in 1839, for a voyage to the West Indies. OUTWARD BOUND.

Chapter II. Outward Bound

— SHORES OF HAYTI JAMAICA — ABO- LITION OF SLAVERY IN THE WEST INDIES. In the latter part of the year 1839, I left home, accompanied by my wife, on a missionary tour to Jamaica. After stopping by the way at Barbados, Martinique, Tortola, St. Thomas, and Porto Rico, our vessel the Hecla steamer made for the windward passage, and coasted the northern shores of Hayti. The bold outlines of the mountains, which in many places approached to within twenty miles of the shore, and the numerous stupendous cliffs which beetled over it, casting their shadows to a great distance on the deep — the dark retreating bays, particularly that of Samana, and extensive plains opening inland between the lofty cloud covered hills, or running for uncounted leagues by the sea side, covered with trees and bushes, but affording no glimpse of a human habitation — presented a picture of gloom and grandeur, calculated deeply to depress the mind ; such a picture as dense solitude unenlivened by a single trace of civilization, is ever apt to produce.

Where, we inquired of our selves, are the people of the country ? Where its culti vation ? Are the ancient Indian possessors of the soil all extinct, and their cruel conquerors and successors entombed with them in a common grave ? For hun dreds of miles as we swept along its shores, we saw OUTWARD BOUND. 7 no living thing, but now and then a mariner in a solitary skiff, or birds of the land and ocean sailing in the air, as if to shew us that nature had not wholly lost its animation, and sunk into the sleep of death. Towards the north-west extremity of the island our course became a little enlivened : we entered the bay of Cape Haytien, formerly Cape Francois, since Cape Henry, and now, for brevity's sake, The Cape. The terrible fortress of La Ferriere, which commemorates the rale of Christophe, and which serves as a mausoleum for his remains, looked down upon us from a distant moun tain; two forts commanded the entrance to the harbour, in which were numerous merchant vessels lying at anchor, taking in or discharging their cargoes ; and on our right hand, flanked by forest-crowned hills, rose the city itself, once denominated the little Paris — the hand some city of the queen of the Antilles.

Our stay was short : we landed for two hours, left the mail from Europe, spoke to the British Vice-Consul, visited the markets, conversed with a few of the black citizens, and again set sail. Before we had passed through the narrow strait that separates Tortue (the Turtle island) from the main-land, we were gratified with a distant view of the town of Port de Paix, rising in amphitheatre on the hills, illumined by the rays of the setting sun. Soon after we headed the Cape St. Nicholas Mole; and the following day landed at Santiago, the eastern capital of Cuba. Here as at Cape Haytien our stay was limited to the time allowed for post-office business ; the next day we reached King ston in Jamaica. It is not the object of this little volume to detail the incidents of our travels in Jamaica, an island so often visited and so well known ; but we JAMAICA. cannot, in connexion with it, avoid a brief notice of that memorable event which has done so much to change the condition of its people, and seems fraught with such inestimable blessings to posterity.

Here we trace the interesting spectacle of a colony, once deeply distressed and clamouring for fiscal aid to the mother country ; now smiling in prosperity and brightened by mercantile hope; not long since distracted by civil dis turbances, the fruits of oppression inseparable from its institutions; now enjoying peace and tranquillity, with a docile, loyal; industrious population, whom the Queen of England, or the ruler of any nation, might well be gratified to own as subjects. The grand experiment of giving unqualified freedom to the slaves of Jamaica and our other West Indian islands, has been attended with the happiest success. All classes of the population rejoice in the result. The prognostications of the planters and the mortgagees of colonial property, that the slaves when emancipated would become an idle vagabond race, a nuisance to the soil — that the fields would go out of cultivation — the fives of the white inhabitants be en dangered — and the properties ruined — these and other prophecies of the same sackcloth cast, are all falsified by the most gratifying facts.

Just the reverse of all this has taken place; and Jamaica and the other islands have begun a new race of prosperity. "Magnus ab integro sœclorum nascitur ordo." The labourers work well for wages, and squatting and vagabondage are unknown. The cane and coffee fields partially ne glected at the coming in of freedom, owing to the injudicious attempts of overseers and attorneys to coerce labour, by means of rent, are recovering their former fruitfulness. Two years have passed away in which we WORKING OF FREEDOM. have seen diminished produce, the consequence of unwise conduct on the part of the planters ; and a third, in which the deficiency has sprung from a visitation of Divine providence in a long continued drought. Sounder views of political economy, and a wiser con duct than was once pursued have succeeded; the seasons are again propitious, and there is now every reason, with regard to the future, to look for extended commerce and increased prosperity.

In passing through Jamaica (and we went into almost every district) we scarcely met with a single individual who seemed to regret the change that had taken place — not one who professed a wish, even for gain's sake, to return to the former system of slavery. We conversed with men of every rank and condition, from the Governor and Judges of the island to the Clerk who serves in the counting house, and all bore their unqualified testimony to the important fact, that freedom works well. That it works well for the labourer is obvious at every step of the stranger's progress : the proofs are on every hand ; that it works well for the proprietor is demonstrable by a few simple and striking facts. The estates of pro prietors, in numerous instances, are worked at a less cost now than under slavery.

Penn or pasture land, we were told as a matter of common observation, may be worked cheaper than before : some of the large coffee planta tions we know are so worked, from the testimony of the managers themselves ; and we have in our posses sion a letter from the attorney of some of the largest sugar estates in the island, in which he distinctly tells us, that he sees no reason why sugar properties in the district where he lives should not be cultivated as cheap as ever they were. To all the proprietors of such lands, b3 WORKING OF FREEDOM. it is quite evident, that the share of the twenty millions which fell to their lot, was given them for nothing. The compensation money paid by Great Britain to the planters, however it might be intended to operate, serves, not as an indemnity to meet losses accruing from the great and happy change from slavery to freedom, but to clear off the accumulated and fast increasing incum brances which the oppressive and wasteful system of slavery had induced.

A large proportion of the estates in the West Indies had been brought dreadfully into debt, and made subject to heavy mortgages. The com pensation money has served to unlock the iron chests and set the securities and title deeds free. Instead of being subject, as formerly, to all the heavy charges of an imperious consignee, imperious and unbending, because the estates were under his power, the planter is now at liberty to send his produce to the best market, to choose for a correspondent the ablest merchant he can find, and to bring the expenses of transport within the utmost economical limits. One step in economy leads to another : he looks about him on every hand : pleased with the success of one experiment, he tries another, and going on as a cautious, prudent man ever will do, gets delivered from the consequences of former poverty, neglect, and waste.

The consequence of the present state of things : of physical freedom to the slave, and commercial freedom to the master, is this, that landed estates are rising in value. The former money-value of the slaves has already, in perhaps the majority of instances, been transferred to the soil, many properties in land now selling for a much larger sum, than during the agitation of the slavery question the land and the slaves would have sold for together. WORKING OF FREEDOM. What a practical comment on the adage, that justice is in all cas,es the truest policy ; and what an example to those nations who, in spite of warning, and in defiance of Christian principle persist in continuing slavery ! But if, instead of a pecuniary gain to the proprietor, the planter should be able to prove a loss — if less sugar and rum were likely to be exported, and the profits of cane and coffee fields should sink to a minimum : what would be the trifling inconvenience compared with the immense advantages gained by the labouring com munity ?

The proprietary body has rather a smaller income than before, but the people are well clothed, housed, and fed ; chapels and school-houses are erected, education is sought after, public worship is frequented, the prisons are getting gradually emptied, and a fine, free, moral and religious peasantry tread the soil till lately disgraced by fetters and the whip. Never was a great moral experiment more successfully carried out than the abolition of slavery in the British colonies ; never, in proportion to the number who were objects of it, was a political change attended by such speedily happy results. May England persevere in her righteous legislation till every vestige of slavery has ceased from her soil in the East as well as the West, and may her noble conduct stimulate her daughter on the other side the Atlantic, and all other nations to follow her example. RETURN TO HAYTI.

Chapter III. Return To Hayti Santiago De Cuba Town Of Cafe Haytien

— PLANTATIONS IN THE PLAINE DU NORD EXCURSION TO SANS SOUCI CHRISTOPHE GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. The year 1840 had now nearly passed away, and the employments which had so long detained us in Jamaica being brought to a close, we took leave of our many kind friends at Kingston, and went on board the Government steamer bound for Barbados, with the outward mail. The cabin passengers were seventeen in number : — some bound for Cuba ; two, like ourselves, for Hayti ; and the remainder for the windward isles, or for Europe. The night was stormy, the wind blowing hard a-head, but early the next morning we lost sight of land, and at four o'clock, p.m., cast anchor in the spacious and beautiful harbour of St. Jago. The commander of the packet, knowing the remorse lessness of the Spanish character in these regions, advised me not to go on shore, as since we landed there twelve mouths before, a notification had been made to the captains of English ships, that no person known or suspected to favour missionary or anti-slavery principles would be safe in the city, and that the British Consul could not, if he would, afford them protection.

We felt no disposition to visit the city again ; we had perambulated its streets once, and were SANTIAGO DE CUBA. quite content to remain on deck, and take a leisurely view of the shipping and the harbour, and the hills and mountains that surround it. The dominion of slavery may transform man into a monster, but throws no curse on natural scenery. Commerce is ever active in St. Jago : slaves on the quay and wharf, watched and superintended by villanous looking white men and half castes, are constantly busy in stowing away foreign merchandise, and loading outward-bound vessels with copper ore from the neighbouring mines. The city, itself gloomy in appearance, like the bondage it fosters, has streets of houses built after the Moorish fashion. H -avy gateways open into court-yards, surrounded by chambers and domestic offices : iron gratings in front, instead of windows, frown on the street ; jealousies above are substituted for curtains and blinds, and broad piazzas on the second floor overhang the pavement, protecting passengers from the rays of a vertical sun.

The streets are hot, unpaved, and dusty, and in the middle of the day quiet enough ; some common carts may be seen, and, perhaps, a few volantes richly painted and gilded, with enormous high wheels, and springs and axles so arranged as to adapt them to deep gullies and broken ground, in which the wealthy slave-owners, or their Creole ladies, without caps or bonnets, ride out in a lolling careless posture to transact business, or make their morning calls. At our first visit to this port, in company with a young Peruvian, our fellow -passenger, we called at the house of a bar rister, a friend of his, whose wife and daughter received us with much courtesy. Almost as soon as we were seated fruit was ordered, and when we had partaken of it, a female slave entered the room with a pitcher of SANTIAGO DE CUBA. water and basin, and a towel on her arm, and after pouring water on our hands in succession, and handing us the towel, removed the remainder of the feast, and left the room.

The inhabitants of Santiago are estimated at from twenty-five to thirty thousand, of whom a large number are household and out-door slaves, in abject degrading servitude. We saw no glass windows in a single house, except in the resi dence of the British Consul. In the course of a few hours our commander received the mail, and we again threaded our way amongst the many vessels in the harbour, passed the castle of Moro, and once more set sail in a stormy sea. The threat now held out to missionaries and abolitionists who dare to set foot on Cuban soil is, that " they shall be sent to the Moro, and there lie without salvation." Another rough night and swelling waves; but before noon on the morrow we came in sight of Cape Nicholas Mole, in Hayti, leaving the eastern coast of Cuba yet visible far behind us.

Early in the morning of the following day, we landed a second time at Cape Haytien. It was the first day of the new year 1841, the thirty-seventh anniversary of Haytien independence, and of course kept as a national festival. Liberty was proclaimed by Dessalines — equal law and liberty to all classes in 1804. The custom-house was closed, a sentinel or two watched the landing of the passengers, and their luggage was sent under guard to the public store. There are no taverns in Hayti like those of Europe, where strangers are sure to get accommodated for money; boarding-houses are found in some of the larger towns, and where there are none, the traveller must solicit board and lodging as a favour, and grass for his horses if travelling on the road, and get on in the best way he can. We obtained private apartments at the Cape, at the house of La Veuve Piquion, a respectable coloured matron, who keeps a store on the quay, and is much esteemed by her neigh bours for the prudent manner in which she trains up a large family of sons and daughters.

This good lady received us as her guests, with liberty to dine alone, or at a common table with herself and her children. For the first few days we preferred the latter, and after that, for several weeks used a common saloon with our friends Henry and Maria W. Chapman, of Boston, Massachusetts, who, advocates of anti-slavery principles like ourselves, had come to this island to inspect the state and condition of the people, to see the country, and improve their health. At this house we were handsomely entertained, with much satisfaction to ourselves, at a moderate cost, and had no reason to repent our choice of a tavern. Let not travellers from England and America expect, how ever, to find in Hayti well-furnished lodging rooms, privacy of retirement, or those common comforts which in their own ordinary family routine at home are considered as essential.

They may depend on being supplied with good food, and if they wish it, with the fine fruits of the country, and the light wines of France : they may find a lodging-room sheltered from the rays of the sun, and the rains of heaven ; more than these in the shape of entertainment they must not look for. There are many discomforts in Haytien domestic hfe* to which only the mind naturally contented in itself can easily become reconciled. We had brought with us to this country some large cases silled with elementary books for young people, reading lessons for public schools, and a good store of moral and religious works, chiefly in the French and Spanish languages, which had been liberally furnished by our friends in England. The duty on books imported is very high in this island, amounting to about twenty-five per cent, on the cost price; but when I explained to the Director of the Customs that they were brought for gratuitous distribution, and not as merchandize, he generously allowed them to pass duty free.